


Live Through the Night

by Shiverslightly



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Vampire, Blood and Gore, Bondage, Bottom Keith (Voltron), Dark, Dark Shiro (Voltron), Dom/sub, Explicit Sexual Content, Gangs, Keith's a tough boy, Kidnapping, M/M, Minor Character Death, Mystery, POV Keith (Voltron), Sex Club, Sex Toys, Size Kink, Street Fight, Supernatural Elements, Vampire Shiro (Voltron), Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-24
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2019-08-28 20:38:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 44,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16730232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiverslightly/pseuds/Shiverslightly
Summary: Life hadn’t given Keith much, but what he had he fought for. Gone were the days he struggled to survive. Gone were the late night distractions bound in rope. It was supposed to be what he wanted.But when a past he thought he’d left behind comes back to haunt him he’s pulled into an underworld darker than he could’ve imagined.And that’s not even including the thing that stalks him.





	1. Live Through the Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Rouge - [Live Through the Night](https://youtu.be/HWcAF-orlWg)

“Looks like we’ve gone a bit over,” the professor at the front announces to a mostly empty class.

In his seat at the back, Keith tries to control the erratic tapping of his foot. Flitting his eyes over glazed expressions to the door set just behind. His own bag packed and slung over his shoulders when class was supposed to have ended twenty minutes ago.

She starts to gather the papers scattered at her desk. “If anyone has questions, you’re welcome to stay behind, otherwise—”

He’s up and out before she even finishes, shoving past the lingering students and stark halls to make his escape. With unnecessary force he slams into the large entry doors, leaving startled passerby’s to glare at his back.

This day has been too fucking long.

The night outside is dark. Humid steam from a recent storm rising in dense plumes. Hazy street lights muted to a dull glow. Keith stands at the top of the stairs. Damp, heavy air dragging through his lungs. Checking the time, he curses, pushing into the thickness with a hunch of his shoulders.

Water squelches between boots and asphalt as he squints against weighty clouds, their bleak, oppressive aspect forcing his feet to pick a quicker pace through the quad. But it doesn’t matter. As he rounds the corner it’s just in time to see red lights pull away. Yellow indicator of the last bus flashing a mocking farewell.

“Shit.”

The streets around are quiet and empty. Everyone driven to take shelter against a potent charge that hums through the starless murk. It brushes over his skin and sinks. Makes fine hair raise.

Pulling at the strings of his hood he decides to chance it, steeling himself and preparing to jog the thirty blocks across town. If he’s quick he might just beat the rain.

Normally on nights like this Keith likes the stillness, the calm of a place that’s usually bustling. But tonight, as the soft fall of his footsteps mute, it leaves him strained. Some unnamed anxiety starting to prick at the edges of his awareness, heart beating faster than it needs to.

Even when frequent glances reveal no one there’s a pervasive inkling he can't ignore. An eerie sense that maybe he’s not quite alone. It could be the way the mist seems to grow thick and coagulate, or how it’s chill creeps over.

Despite the unease he finds himself electrified. Licking the edge of his teeth in suspense. It wouldn’t be the first time he'd been marked an easy target. His slender stature and delicate looking features hiding the fact that he’s mostly sharp corners and deadly precision. A mistake he used to enjoy.

It’s the thrill of action that has him ducking into an alley, barely containing the energy that thrums in his tightly coiled muscles. It’s been awhile since he’s had a good fight and after his shit day, he almost craves it. That give of bruising flesh beneath his knuckles. The dark satisfaction of watching them fall.

But nothing comes.

Even in the isolation the narrow alley provides.

Even as he trudges further.

There’s no movement, no sounds. Nothing but his own held breath that he lets out in a huff, shaking his head at his own paranoia. Maybe he really has outrun that life.

When he reaches the next major street, he decides to stick to alleys. The towering apartments on either side providing more comfort than the vast open roads and their haunting silence. It’s just as he rolls his neck, tightened fists slackening, that it comes.

A blur of force that throws him against a building, his skull narrowly escaping brick as he bounces off. Only a second to fight his spinning head before they come again, bag torn off his back, the knife ripped from his belt before his fingers can twitch. Keith’s always been reflex and instinct, but here he's useless. Unable to catch his attacker no matter how fast he twists.

The street lights flicker and die. There's a rush to his side and he finds himself pinned in the blink of an eye, ribs creaking against the pressure as he tries to kick out but there’s nothing to hit. Nothing but his pounding pulse and shadows. Held by the darkness itself.

The smell of burning embers chokes his air the harder he thrashes. Limbs blindly flailing. Then a voice, harsh and guttural, comes through the rush in his ears.

“...You’re mine...”

Panic shreds his insides—fingers scrabble against the wall—rage and desperation welling.

He feels the moment it happens. The moment something solid starts to materialize, particles of air morphing into a monstrous figure. It’s hot and impossibly large, burning heat that sears into every inch as it suffocates. An infuriated growl rips past Keith’s teeth when he finds he can’t move, when possessive talons bite into his hips.

A rough, wet thing drags across his skin. Slow and foul.

He can fight this, he thinks.

He can—

—a sudden need to surrender slams against his nerves, so powerful it steals his breath. He cries out against it, clenching his jaw, even as his traitorous body starts to ease, melting into the thing that wraps around him. A sound that’s not quite a laugh yet full of amusement, floats in the dark. Keith squeezes his eyes, wills himself to gain control. To do _something_.

It speaks in his mind, voice like gravel. “Don’t fight me and I’ll make it quick.”

Crimson welts burgeon with raking claws. A hand that feels anything but human brushing the hair at his nape almost tenderly. A jarring contrast to the knee that's shoved between his thighs. A rigid hardness pushing at his back.

It takes everything Keith has just to punch out a broken, “...Fuck...you.”

This time it really does chuckle.

With no warning one of its claws digs into his throat, splitting his flesh and bursting scarlet blood that spills against his collar. He should be frantic, terrified, and somewhere distant he probably is, but as the thing leans close, sniffs in a long indulgent inhale, Keith’s overcome with white hot desire. It blooms in the pit of his stomach, aches even lower and has him gasping. Not even fighting the harsh yank that bares his neck.

Its mouth is so close. He yearns and pulses, fingertips sparking—the only things that feel anything other than numbing want. Needle like teeth graze his shoulder and this is it. He groans, eyes rolling back, weak against his need.

But the spark ignites, rushes up his sides, and when the thing hesitates, he burns. Like fiery flames that surge in a deafening clap, a burst of light explodes from his chest. Keith falls to his knees with the force, busted face tearing against the wall.

It takes only a microsecond for his mind to clear like a curtain lifted, then he shoots to his feet. Head whipping back and forth but all he sees is desolate road. Nothing there but trash and the lingering scent of smoke and copper. With shaking fingers, he reaches for his neck, wincing at the tender gash.

His heart hammers a jagged rhythm inside his chest as he peers down the alley. Laboured breaths. Frozen limbs.

The glint of his blade in the streetlights that must’ve come back on, grabs his attention. With unsure footing he bends to retrieve it, the deafening patter of fat raindrops starting to bounce off the ground.

They soak him through and dilute bloodied clothes as he flees for home, practically throwing himself through the door and locking it down. With a pathetic, half formed sense of security, he sinks to the floor, eyes falling shut. Slumped and shivering with something that's not quite relief.

･･ ☾･･

The next few days are mostly a blur. Keith’s never believed in myths and knows there’s no plausible explanation for what happened. A mugger that caught him on an off day, the rest a fever dream, something imagined from too many late nights and an overactive imagination is what he settles for. He didn’t survive this long without seeing some shit and compartmentalizing worked before. It’ll work again.

But he'd gotten more than a few looks when he showed up for work the next morning, face bruised over and jacket collar up like a 50’s greaser. Luckily the scrap yard had been busy. It wasn't until mid day as Keith stripped an old Mercedes, that he eventually caught someone's attention.

“What happened to you?” Kolivan asks, his scowl and narrowed eyes deeper than usual.

Keith tugs at the neck of his shirt, shifting slightly away. “Nothing.”

Pressing his lips tighter Kolivan eyes the side of Keith’s face, mostly still torn and angry.

So, Keith clears his throat and tries again. “I tried helping a stray, this was the thanks I got.”

He attempts to look preoccupied, hunched under the hood and studiously dismantling its engine. Nothing else gets said but Kolivan does stare a little longer, just this side of uncomfortable.

Later, in the trailer during his break Thace and Ulaz attempt to get more out of him.

“Are you sure it wasn’t actually a wolverine?”

Throwing Thace a glare, Keith tries to let that be his answer. It’s unsuccessful.

“There’s no way that’s from a little kitten.” When no response comes, instead of taking the hint Thace only pushes on. “What did you even do to it?”

“Nothing.”

Ulaz raises an eyebrow. “Well how did you approach it?”

“What does that matter?”

“Were you friendly? Did you even smile?”

“Uh—”

“Keith doesn't smile,” Thace snickers behind them, “it would ruin his image.”

“Fuck off.”

“See?”

After that he avoids the trailer and social interaction in general. Just keeps his head down, works during the day and goes to class at night. Makes sure to leave on time no matter how long Professor Sanda yammers on.

Simple. Easy. Normal.

Except for this persistent itch that won't leave. The thought that’s steadily been rising since the night he doesn't think about. Certainly not about the thirst that’d coursed through him, the small part that had longed to bend, to yield. Almost like he'd _needed_ to.

It’s a terrible idea. Definitely not what he should want after something like that. But it watered the seed that’d probably already been growing knowing the way he used to get off to it.

So, it's unsurprising when he finds himself some days later standing at the black nondescript door of Bayard, waiting to be granted access to the club he’d tried to leave behind.

Someone he doesn't know answers the door but he gives his name anyway, the heavy wood pulled aside seconds later. Keith doesn't hesitate as he moves past the main level. With its flashy bar and strobing lights. Cage dancers in latex harnesses flanking the room that’s filled by a crowd undulating like waves. He pushes through, jostled and pawed at but he’s not there to mingle.

When he reaches the corridor its a few more steps to meet the stairwell, mounting them two at a time. Another series of knocks finally produces a familiar face.

Romelle stands tall above him, helped by the six-inch, thigh high boots that hug her curves as tight as the black micro dress that leaves nothing to the imagination.

“Keith,” she smirks and licks her lips, “...it's been awhile.”

He nods, not in the mood for her shameless flirting. “It has. Is she in?”

With predatory eyes she stalks them down his body, pausing at the scar across his neck that’s no more than a faint line now. But it makes her leer all the same.

“In her office,” she purrs with a small jerk of her head, barely stepping back. Their bodies brush as she crowds in, lightly trailing fingers down his arm. “Maybe I’ll see you back there.”

Humming in barely there acknowledgement he doesn’t look back, too intent on his goal. The room he enters is subtler up here. More discreet. Here it’s mostly dimmed lights and hushed conversations. Most of the patrons either grouped around two-way mirrors or lounging in plush furniture meant to relax.

He glances through the mirrors as he walks. A man, ass bare and bent over the arm of a chair, a woman spread lewd and putting on a show. A multitude of men and women watching from this side of the glass. You’d think acts like these wouldn’t leave him nostalgic.

The office door’s cracked open when he gets there. A Prim British accent sounding startled coming from just inside.

“Are you certain?...” There’s a gasp of shock, and then “...impossible.” Keith freezes with his hand on the door, hesitating enough to catch, “...yes keep an eye out. I want to know everything…”

He contemplates turning away, shifting enough that it must draw attention for next thing he hears is the loud commanding tone he’s used to.

“If you’re going to eavesdrop you might as well come in.”

Hands automatically held in supplication, he shoulders through, starting with a, “Sorry— “before he’s cut off, Allura’s blue eyes widening with a smile that stretches a beat later, brightening the troubled look off her face.

“Keith.”

She rushes to embrace him, exposed black studded bra digging into his chest. Smelling a bit like vanilla, he has to close his eyes against an onslaught of memories before releasing her.

“It’s so good to see you.”

Keeping his head ducked, it sounds shy when he coughs, but sincerely answers, “Yeah, you too.”

Her cool hand cups his face and the smile doesn’t leave when their eyes meet. It’s kind and full of affection. Something not many can say they’ve received from the club owner.

“Come. Sit.” Sweepingly she motions to a couple chairs as she makes for the hutch in the corner. “How have you been?”

“I’ve been good. Busy...”

Keith trails off for a moment, distracted. Allura’s office looks much the same as he remembers. Dark abstract oil painting he helped hang behind her desk, the lonely shipyard still visible outside her window. He hears the splash of what he knows is the most expensive scotch he’s ever had being poured into glasses. It’s comforting. Almost feels like coming home.

He clears his throat. “...but good.”

“And your studies?”

“They’re good too.”

The crystal glass she hands him has always felt like a bit much, but he has to admit it fits her aesthetic to a T. Taking a seat across from him, Allura perches on the edge. She’s stunning with her silver hair pulled back in its signature bun. Accentuating the long line of soft dark skin that opens down her chest in a plunging neckline. The red underside of a Louboutin floats in the air from her crossed legs.

She sighs when she gets a look at him. “It’s been too long.”

A small blush rises to his cheeks. He knows it’s been a few months but he didn’t expect this kind of response. No one’s ever cared whether he comes or goes before. “I’m sorry.”

Her quiet laugh seems to fill the office, makes it brighter. “It’s alright, we’ve...managed so far.”

The way she halts around the word managed has him worried.

“Has Axca not been working out?”

Allura snorts, “Axca is great, actually. It’s the guests that keep propositioning her that aren’t.” Keith chuckles himself, not surprised at all. Allura eyes him before adding, “But I suppose that was always an issue with you as well.”

And it had been kind of hard to work security when he was constantly getting approached. But it was only when he started joining, spending just as many nights in the rooms as out that it started to affect his work.

“But enough of my problems. What brings you here Keith?”

He swears she already looks smug. It ignites the need that brought him here. “Things have just been…a little crazy.” He’s purposely coy. “I was hoping to maybe work out some stuff.”

Eyebrows arching, her grin is positively feral as she echoes, “Some stuff?”

This was always a part of their game, their tease. It has his chest constricting.

Submissively he leans over his knees, dropping his head to peer up through heavy lashes. “Please.” It’s sugar sweet. “For old times sake?”

Rapidly darkening eyes gaze into his own, that Louboutin stretching out as if to run the length of his calf. Thick air stills between them.

But then she sighs, breaking the trance with a shift of her eyes. “I wish I could, we used to have such fun.”

Disappointed, he lets out the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.

Her voice is apologetic, maybe even a little regretful when she says, “There’s just too much going on tonight. I’m sorry”

Keith waves her off, thinking he’ll just get a drink at the bar and about to say as much when she continues, pushing forward with earnest eyes. “But let me arrange it. I’ll find someone that can take care of you.”

He would’ve preferred to stick with Allura, someone known, someone safe. But now, standing in Bayard with its decadent self indulgence, he feels so feverish that just about anyone would do. So, he nods. “Okay.”

“Male or female?”

Someone strong, someone big. Hard and unyielding. “Male.” It makes him tremor just thinking about it.

Allura knows his preferences, he knows he doesn’t have to sit around and describe the way he wants to be pushed around. He stands and tries not to show how eager he is but probably fails.

“Leave it with me. I’ll find exactly what you need,” she says, reaching out to trail perfectly manicured nails across his hand before taking his empty glass.

He nods again. Turning towards the door when he hears her call out.

“And Keith?” Standing at her desk she holds his eyes, stretches the heated stare with a long, drawn out sip of scotch. “Next time, we’ll play.”

It causes a grin like the cat with the cream.

He can hardly wait.

･･ ☾･･

It’s not long that he mills around. Most of it spent at the bar shooting shit with Coran. Allura’s right hand man often choosing to be out with the crowd rather than stuck in an office.

The sleek black tabletop shines from within. Lights inlaid between glass and illuminating the various drinks Coran mixes from beneath. It warps Keith’s reflection and distracts him from whatever Coran’s been talking about.

“...that new obedience bench is really something. Back in my day it was just ropes and hooks but this…” Keith glances up, catching the flash of Coran’s teeth, “...well I suppose you’ll just have to see for yourself sometime,” he finishes with a wink.

Not for the first time Keith wonders just how much Allura confides in Coran. Though a part of him wants to deny it, the louder, more desperate part has to swallow hard at the prospect of being tied down.

“Sir.” Coran’s attention is pulled to a bouncer Keith doesn’t know waiting patiently at the end of the countertop. He tips his head towards Keith before going to speak with the man that’s easily twice his size.

Almost since the moment Keith stepped inside Bayard, he’s felt watched. The feeling of eyes on his back was mostly expected considering much of the old crew were still here. He’d even recognized a few regular guests. But especially while he’s been at the bar the sensation has only grown. Like a shadow that looms. An aura unseen. He shivers when the flash of an alley crosses his mind, instead choosing to focus on Coran down the bar.

He’s leaned in and listening to security. Sharp eyes widening for a moment before they flick to Keith and away. Keith doesn’t miss the hard press of Coran’s lips or the questioning look he gives the bouncer, who stands silent but for a bob of his head. Coran eyes flutter shut, the look of a man surrendering, before they snap once more in Keith’s direction.

“Good news!” he calls with an overstretched smile, “Allura’s found a partner.”

It shouldn’t bring as much trepidation as it does excitement but Keith’s always been a contradiction. Now he grins a little, tongue peeking out to wet his bottom lip as he walks over.

“You’ll be in one of the main rooms.”

The rooms he’d passed in the lounge, the ones for everyone to see.

Keith arches an eyebrow. “Expecting a good show, are you?”

Coran’s forced smile falters a little, gaze darting furtively, “Just keeping an eye on things.”

Then he reaches out, squeezing Keith’s arm briefly, the action more unnerving than comforting. But he returns the gesture and pats Coran’s hand before slipping from his hold, feeling a bubbling mix of anticipation fizz beneath his sternum.

The lights have dimmed impossibly lower as Keith walks in silence, trailing the bouncer. Long shadows and darker corners reaching towards them. This dark he can almost pretend they’re alone. Like there won’t be a handful of people watching.

When they enter the room his eyes immediately fall to a pile in the corner. Leather cuffs and some sort of outfit already waiting for him. The bouncer motions towards them with a jut of his chin, “Guy wants you dressed and ready to go.”

Pulse rapidly quickening Keith tears his gaze to catch the man before he leaves. “He knows my rules yeah?”

Another nod. “He’s been told.” For a man that hardly speaks it’s definitely a surprise when he adds, “We’ll be right outside.”

And the way he says it, like Keith might need the reassurance, has something unpleasant rising. But Keith pushes it down, not even difficult now that the leather cuffs have left him with a thrill that’s almost suffocating.

When it’s only him, when the door clicks softly shut and the mirror goes opaque, Keith takes his time undressing. Slowly peeling his sticky cotton tee and worn jeans from his finely tuned body. Tying back his hair. Deep breaths help quell the nerves enough to tuck his belongings in a neat little corner. Next to the waiting gear.

A dark burgundy robe sits beneath the cuffs, sliding cool against his skin. Silk molding to brush the tops of his thighs. One at a time he fixes the padded cuffs around each wrist, each ankle. Adjusting so hard metal rings face front and centre. It’s then he notices the small blindfold resting on the table. Black and velvety.

His heart thrums a little louder, picks up the pace. Eyes slipping shut as the blindfold covers them.

There’s murmuring behind the glass, the hum of overhead lights dulling when they dim, and then...the turn of a knob. Bees flood his ears but it’s not enough to drown the sharp intake of breath. To mute the current that instantly pulls at Keith’s navel.

But the silence remains, building and stretching. Charging.

He remembers this call, the challenge. Remembers the agony of waiting for contact.

The man steps forward. Slow, measured footsteps. Breath back under control. Acutely Keith feels his presence. Heat radiating in waves the closer he gets. Feels appraising eyes run his length.

Warm breath fanning, soft skin prickling.

But instead of touching, he circles. Keith’s fingers twitch with an overwhelming urge to reach out, to drown himself in the spice that coats his admirer. There’s a low hum of approval but the man doesn’t speak, obeying Keith’s rules; no talking, no kissing.

It might seem contradictory for a sex club, but Keith’s never needed these things. He doesn’t need someone to call him a slut while he chokes on thick cock. He just needs to do it.

He’s almost quivering with the need when suddenly everything lights. His entire being leaping at first touch.

Fingers graze the back of his neck and it’s like a whole new sensation. The molecules within his cells melt, pops of hunger burst.

Keith’s breath is embarrassingly quick, cock already starting to fatten. Calloused pads drag as the man draws near, positioning behind and pressing in.

His bulk engulfs him.

A hard, chiseled chest pillows the fall of Keith’s head and he groans without shame. Especially now, when he feels the width of those shoulders. The strength in the hips that cradle his own. Keith pushes back and goes weak. _Everything_ about this man is large.

A sharp tug pulls at his hair, clear in its warning but to Keith it's an invite. He does it again, testing the waters and gasps when his world spins. Slammed to his knees. The hand in his hair twisting hard, another one ripping at his fringe. Held too tight to move.

Keith sucks air through his teeth, stiff and so fucking turned on. Scalp singing along with his blood. The man shifts and shoves Keith’s face violently, jerking it to a stop right before impact. Keith knows where he is, even blindfolded he knows his face lines up perfectly. Another harsh tug and he gets the message.

His body bows, going as pliant as he can. Hands planted between both knees on the floor and if not for the blindfold he’d peak upwards, fake innocence. He makes a soft whimper, the smallest sound of apology.

Coarse fingers grip his jaw, dig into the bone. It takes all Keith's self control not to move but he’s still _so close_. Can almost taste the salt of what he just knows is a beautiful cock still trapped tragically beneath too many layers. He wants it. Now.

Tentatively, meekly, he sticks out his tongue. Attempts to push forward and moans when the man allows it. Even through thick fabric that cock feels heavy. Haltingly he laps, tongue tracing the swollen mass, imagining the veins it would map. The hands in his hair give a fraction, hardly an inch but it’s all Keith needs to mouth at the bulge. To nuzzle his nose and suckle on folds.

He grows bolder with the pleased gasps and twitching palms that surround him. Tries to get his teeth around the zipper pull. It’s hard work with the drool falling from his mouth while he keeps his hands obediently on the ground. Harder still when fingers slip from his hair to run the collar of the robe. To dip beneath and push aside the silk that glides like water off his shoulders.

It pools and strangles a cry from his throat when it strokes along his cock. Awakens his lust and sets it frenzied. So hard now.

Mewling and rubbing against the man’s fly, strong arms grip his biceps and barely exert themselves as they heft upwards. One moment on his knees and the next hazardly bent over a table, the movement so fast he doesn’t know how he got there. The large, unyielding body savagely covering his own sweet proof he’s not the only one losing patience.

The spice from before consumes him, wraps around in invisible chains while his arms are forced up to meet real ones. Leather cuffs weighing down his wrists as straps feed through their loops. Jilting hunger tips him into overtime. He yanks on the restraints. Stretched far enough he can barely lift his chest, cold metal scraping along peaked nipples. Not realizing his ankles are fixed as well until it’s too late.

Torso spread across the table, ass up, Keith’s laid bare. Fingers curling around rope, legs wide. The heat behind him like the fire in his belly. Smoke in his lungs.

The eyes of not only the man in the room but the crowd he knows has gathered sears across his flesh. Every inch on display. He’s glad they're watching, wants everyone to see.

A brawny weight smothers him, heat stifling. Blistering fingertips rake his sides, bearing down. Anything but gentle. One word running through his mind.

 _More_.

A low chuckle sends shivers down his spine. It’s dark and almost sinister. Keith feels it in his toes.

The first lick makes his whole body jerk. Cuffs crashing against the table when a long, coarse tongue dips between his shoulders, swirls down his back. The following scrape of teeth shocking. Wet heat all he can focus on, even when he grinds his teeth, even when he rubs his cock into the table.

Large hands—so, so _large_ —clamp an iron grip on his hips to keep him still, what sounds like a growl shaking his core. They span his waist, thick fingers gouging like hooks. Keith tries to buck free as a wave of spasming want wracks through his body but he’s pinned. God he can’t remember ever feeling like this.

Choking when lips meet soft mounds. Moaning when hands roughly spread. Harsh, open mouthed kisses nip into tight flesh. Drag hot and hard. A gasp punches past Keith’s teeth when liquid heat laps near his hole. He’s trembling, rope rattling as his hands squeeze into fists. _Almost there._

But the bastard licks by. Takes his time to lavish around but never too close, not where Keith needs it. Chuckling when Keith cries in frustration and he’d be pissed if the deep baritone didn’t clench his needy walls. Instead he moans as loud as he dares, losing himself in the helpless feeling of being controlled.

The man continues his path, lower still and buries his face against Keith’s inner thigh, almost ravenous. Shaky, panting breath fanning. Unconsciously Keith pushes back, wants to feel that sucking burn, wants those sharp teeth to sink in, to draw blood. The thought so clear, so carnal, he sees it as a flash before his eyes. This stranger devouring him, taking every part of Keith for himself.

Cold air scalds his thighs. Leaves him shaking in the sudden shift. No mouth, not even a hand still on him. He tries to fight through the needy haze, attempts to lift his head. The chill feels wrong. He can’t stop his whimper, can’t help but spiral. He must’ve fucked up.

“Shhh.”

Gruff hands return. Warm. Petting. Relief like a rush turning him weak.

“Shhh.”

Next comes lips, a little softer. Careful kisses, hesitantly pressed. Keith almost cries.

Lips and fingers work in tandem, kneading and whispering assurance without words.

Keith’s spiked heart begins to settle, sinking docile into the table, slack in his cuffs. The sweet attention sparking in a forgotten place. Delving further than the desire temporarily held at bay. It’s glowing, distracting. Terrifying. That is until he feels it. A swipe of that blistering tongue right where he’s wanted it for so long.

The flat of it covers his entrance. Twitching his rim with the need to feel deeper. He gasps, breath condensing on the table. Furiously hyperventilating.

A groan vibrates against his hole, shakes apart any decency he might’ve had left. Sharp fleshy edge tasting everything, slippery trails making his hole sloppy when it spears inside. Wet. Firm. Keith cries out like a whore in a rough, breaking rasp.

There’re stars behind the blindfold, dancing up his back, raining in comets of streaking light. He’s caught in their tails. Too much. Touch, heat, smoke. How long is this fucking tongue?

Reaching depths unfelt it laves against his inner walls and leaves him incoherent. Not even aware of the sounds pouring out his mouth that can no longer close. Drool dampening the ends of his sweaty bangs.

He’s already so close, wound so tight from a few restraints and a hard, strong body. It’s pathetic but he feels too good to care.

All he needs is that meaty cock to split him open. To feel the ache for days.

Wicked teeth enclose around him and he shouts. Spasms as his legs give out but it doesn’t matter because the man is rising. Massive bulk above him. Rubbing that still clothed dick against his ass and reaching for something. Please, please, _please_ let it be lube.

The blood in his ears muffle it, but he feels slicked, cool metal prod his entrance. Feels the rumble in beefy pecs at his back when it pushes in. Breaching his pink pucker and dragging slow.

Teeth fix to his shoulder, worry at his nape but all he can do is whine at how the bullet starts to glide. Cold turning hot as it adjusts, builds. It’s good—really fucking good—rolls back his eyes and makes him want to scream, ‘ _Fuck me. Make it hurt._ ’

There’s commotion at his back, like something being pushed aside and the bullet flies faster. The man's clenched fist slams into his cheeks, pushing the toy as far as it’ll go over and over. Keith’s caught up in it. Grinds back, bouncing against each blow. Dick dragging between himself and the table. The friction driving him crazy.

“Yeah.” It slips out. “Fuck...yeah.”

He’s never broken his own rule before, never had the urge but he can’t even begin to decipher why because the bullet’s buzzing. Maybe has been for awhile but now it’s kicked up. Pulsing right against his sweet spot and he’s not gonna last but there's nowhere to hide.

A hand slips under his rippling body and grabs him. Crude jerks matching the thrusts of the fucking toy that won’t relent. He’s gasping, or trying to. More stars, more comets, more teeth digging sharper.

Building. Climbing. Mounting.

Bursting in a mess of white and a yell so loud they hear it outside. Dead limbs brought back to life, seizing in a peak of blessed intoxication. High and shooting higher. No longer on this plane.

He comes to himself in pieces. The tingling in his toes, throbbing at his wrists.

Grunts behind him and the satisfying feel of sticky seed spurting across his thighs. Branding him.

Heavy weight, heavy breaths draped across his back.

Spice, like nutmeg. Smouldering embers.

Something tugging at his memory.

Gentle laps and soft caresses against abused skin.

Lights spinning.

Then he’s in a chair. Robe tied, cuffs off and blindfold removed by the bouncer from earlier. No one else in the room.

Point A does not connect but he’s still floating. Still lost.

Somehow, he makes it home. Finds himself crusty and disgusting in the morning. Marks and bruises almost like splatter art down the back of him.

The shower clears dried fluids, leaves him feeling less sore but the purple and blue stand out stark. As does the sharp twinge whenever he moves.

But when he tucks himself back into bed, new sheets, fresh clothes, clean body, he’s content.

Sated.

･･ ☾･･

Weeks later and everything’s back on track. Keith’s upcoming finals have taken over an inordinate amount of his time. Reviewing even during his breaks at the scrapyard. Going back to school and getting a degree hadn’t initially been life’s plan. Somehow doing it now, later in life, it means more. He’s been on the other side, seen what awaited him. Knows he wants better.

Of course, Thace and Ulaz tease him relentlessly but Kolivan’s incredibly helpful. Keith hadn’t expected a man who made his living off of other people’s junk to know much about applied physics but those same assumptions were probably made of himself as well. Kolivan had even offered to cut back his hours but without the extra income Keith would’ve struggled.

So instead he pushes through his days, decomposing calculations while sorting through scraps, ignoring jibes and co-workers in general. But after work he finds he studies best at the library. Less distractions.

The main branch downtown is huge. Six floors and tons of quiet places. His favourite spot is always empty. Fourth floor, nestled between shelves in the Census and Government Documents section. No one comes here, not even the staff.

He blasts his music to drown out the noise anyway. Which is almost ironic considering he chose a chill beats playlist.

Bobbing his head and scribbling through problems in his notebook he’s totally absorbed. X, Y, Z floats through his head, written on the page in what makes no logical sense. He’s puzzling over it, scratching things out and finally just tearing out the page when a book falls off the shelf in front of him.

Keith jumps higher than he’d care to admit. Rips his headphones off his ears and stares at the large volume face down on the ground. Eyes darting around, he surveys the area. It’s late. Darker in this out of the way section. Shelves overcrowded in dust and books and very little space to see behind.

Rising from the table Keith takes his time. Forces even breaths as he packs his stuff. Never takes his eyes off the shelves when he slips on his pack. Cautiously he picks his way towards the fallen book.

There’s nothing there that he can see. The space seemingly as empty as ever. Probably just gravity.

Nonetheless he shakes his head and continues to the stairs. Concentration completely shot now.

For how large the building is the stairwell is shockingly narrow. Cold grey walls that echo Keith’s heavy tread back at him. A few floors down and someone else enters the landing above. Quiet murmuring when another set joins. Keith shrugs his pack higher and quickens the pace.

The events from last month cross his mind and he tries to swallow his fear, reaching the exit and heading for his train. It’s foggier than expected, makes the sidewalk feel more isolated. But there’s enough noise to fill his ears and silence the steps that still follow behind.

So, when a lone figure appears at the crosswalk, turning slow and deliberate towards him, it stops him in his tracks.

Keith’s too close to turn around but when the moonlight hits he finds he doesn’t want to. There’d be no point anyway.

The figure cut from reflected light is tall and wiry. Like this—hands at his sides, posture relaxed—the man looks unassuming, curious. Without his goons Keith could almost think he’s merely there to talk but the footsteps in the stairwell start to make sense.

A lot starts to make sense.

“Hello Keith,” the guy calls out, deceptively pleasant.

Keith does not return the sentiment. “Haxus.”

At once he feels a pressing in. A quick glance revealing the thugs who must’ve been following him. He recognizes Raht and Throk flanking either side. Behind him, somehow looking impossibly larger than last they saw each other, Myzak.

“What do you want?” Keith speaks to the group in general.

Faking offence at Keith’s hostile tone Haxus steps closer. They all do. “Do I need a reason to visit with our favourite little fighter?”

“I’m not _your_ fighter anymore,” Keith sneers.

“Funny that, thinking you can just leave the Galra whenever you please.”

They’re still stalking forward, caging Keith in. He slips a hand behind his back, fingers closing tight on the knife he keeps there. “I already have,” he says in a dangerous voice. “Thought I made myself pretty clear last time.”

With that he sneers at the Galra’s prized fighter, watches the giant bare his teeth and roll both shoulders. The left not quite as smooth.

“That was a lucky move,” Myzak growls.

“You sure?” taunts Keith, all lethal grin. “Should we try again?”

Myzak makes to lunge and Keith pulls his blade, knees braced, hands ready.

“Enough,” Haxus barks, “Sendak’s ordered your return and you _will_ be coming with us.”

Keith curls his lip. “I don’t take orders anymore.”

The street around is completely deserted. The only buildings dark, empty offices. Keith knows from experience he won’t last long against these four. He can only hope they want him alive.

“Don’t make us hurt you beyond repair.”

“You failed a few weeks ago, what makes you think you’ve got me now?”

Haxus, and by extension the others, halt their advance. A confused expression flitting across his face. “Wh— “

But he’s suddenly cut off when Raht drops like a stone to the ground. At first, it’s only black, but then someone steps into the vacated space. Keith’s pretty sure he’s never seen him before, would definitely remember a man like that, but something wriggles in his gut.

The stranger stands almost as tall as Haxus, but broader. Wide upper body filling out the black trench coat that hangs to his calves, waist uncinched. His chin is squared, strong. Short silver hair glowing in the light along with steely eyes. They pierce through Keith’s chest, pin him in place.

“Who is this?” Haxus demands, looking between Keith and the newcomer but Keith is speechless, still staring in shock.

The man mercifully lifts his sharp gaze to stare at Haxus though he doesn’t answer. On the other side Throk’s kneeled next to Raht, fingers digging at his neck. “Pulse is still there,” he confirms.

Eyes locked on the intruder Haxus tries again. “Care to explain why you knocked out my soldier?”

The man’s expression stays cool, almost bored. In the haze he’s beautiful in a terrifying way. “It wasn’t a fair fight,” he rasps in a deep, scratchy voice. Like it hasn’t been used it in awhile.

“Oh? And are you planning on joining us? I wouldn’t recommend it.”

Throughout the exchange Keith’s hardly moved. Honestly not sure what’s even happening. When the man looks at him again it’s like he looks right through him. “If I have to.”

It’s determined, final. Not at all what Keith needs right now. It finally shakes him free, breaks him from liquid grey eyes to face Haxus. “Tell Sendak to stop sending his lackeys. I’m not coming back and that’s final.”

With much more confidence than he feels Keith tries to leave, reaches out to grab the stranger’s arm and pull him away but Myzak moves quick, Throk rising beside him to block their escape.

“This isn’t a negotiation,” Haxus calls from behind. “You know the Galra way.”

More than likely it’s a bluff, they wouldn’t send four members out just to kill him. But Keith’s not willing to risk someone else on a hunch.

“I don’t need your help,” he hisses at the man in his grasp, “just get out of here.”

“Who says I’m here for you,” spits back the guy, right before he slams his fist in an uppercut that sends Throk flying.

For one fleeting moment Keith’s frozen. Watching in slow motion as Throk's lifted from his feet, head skewed at a spine crunching angle. And then he’s slammed in the back by Haxus, hands trying to rip at Keith’s sweater and tie up his arms.

Keith drops to the ground, right leg spinning out to clip Haxus at the knees, pouncing on him as he falls, blade drawn. But Haxus blocks with his own, his other hand latching on to Keith’s wrist and twisting. Catching his forearm between his own to leverage against him until Keith’s forced to drop the knife but not before he punches a knee between Haxus’ ribs. Springing away last minute before he gets stabbed.

From his peripheral he can see the great hulking mass of Myzak run at the mysterious stranger who moves like smoke on water. The fluid motions like nothing he’s ever seen.

But there’s no time to appreciate before Haxus is there, yielding his knife in wild swipes. Keith dodges and spins, evasive maneuvers not without their own graceful element. He’s being pushed back, almost into Myzak’s war path when he’s grabbed at the waist and flung around, back to back with the silver haired man. Keith jumps and cracks his foot across Haxus’ jaw just as the man behind manages a vicious punch to Myzak’s solar plexus, both foes dropping back as one.

“Impressive.” Haxus wipes at the blood from his mouth. Circling. Stalling. “Perhaps we could use the both of you.”

Keith hears a derisive huff from the man at his back right as he says, “Yeah right.”

“No really.”

They turn in time with their attackers. Keith keeping Haxus in sight and wondering at how this stranger keeps pace with him. How he seems to know exactly which way and how far Keith will step. How he keeps their backs close to leave no openings.

“There’s a big deal coming up, we’ll need all hands-on deck.”

In the circle Myzak doesn’t look interested in Haxus’ words. He looks like he wants to murder them both and is furious at the interruption.

“It would make you both rich.”

“I said,” Keith growls, tired of repeating himself. “I’m out and I’m not coming back.”

Haxus sighs as if he expected this answer, quickly moving on. “And you there? Mister good Samaritan. Any chance you want to be useful?”

An angry wave rolls off the stranger. The force of it blasting through Keith so strong he swears he can smell it like burnt ash in the air. “Not to you.”

“Pity.” Haxus sighs once more, turning over the blade in his hands before running full force at Keith.

He can see Myzak mirror his leader and immediately knows if he and the stranger dodged together, the pair would collide. He desperately searches for a way to tell the guy at his back when Keith feels him throw himself to the side. Not a split-second later Keith follows suit and rolls in time to see Myzak run straight into Haxus’ raised dagger. A wet, tearing sound rending through the air.

It enters at chest height, right near the heart. Keith watches as hot blood spurts from the wound and Myzak’s eyes go wide. Haxus’ face is one of pure shock. Bone white and mouth open. “Oh shit,” he whispers.

Then Myzak crashes, body starting to convulse in tiny jerks of his limbs. Without even thinking Keith rushes to his side, presses his palms against the deep gash still spilling blood at an alarming rate.

“Shit,” Keith echoes, looking up for help.

Haxus stands stock still, Raht and Throk—who must’ve come to—staggering to his side. Keith spies the stranger, trench coat torn, hovering closer. An angry red slash across the bridge of his nose and a pitch-dark, disturbing look in his eyes.

“Shit,” Keith says again, this time louder and unable to tear his gaze. “What do we do?”

The man finally speaks roughly. “Leave him with me.”

“W-what?” The dead fall of his tone leaves an awful taste. “He’s bleeding out, what are you gonna do?”

There’s nothing forgiving in this guy’s eyes, no compassion. “What he deserves.”

What the fuck? “Let’s just call an ambulance or something.”

“No.”

That look. Keith can’t stand it. It shakes him down to his core. Infinitely more frightening than the blood that’s now soaked to his elbows. Myzak’s stopped flailing but his chest still rises.

Keith glances around, realizes that they’re suddenly alone. Haxus and his cronies disappeared. Licking his dry lips, he jumps in his skin when he finds the stranger now right in front of him, only meters apart. This close all he can see are dark, sooty pupils. Can taste overpowering spicy cologne on the back of his tongue. An underlying stench of smoke beneath.

“He’s mine,” the man snarls in a voice that’s so horrifyingly familiar Keith scrambles back.

Through the panic crawling up his throat he tries to speak but can’t. The guy bends over and plucks Myzak from the ground like the two hundred pound beast weighs nothing. He turns to leave and Keith’s voice escapes in barely a whisper.

“Who are you?”

It shouldn’t carry as much as it does, not in the weighted mist that cloaks them, but Keith hears his response like it’s right in his head.

“No one.”

･･ ☾･･

Later, after Myzak’s blood has been washed from his hands and he’s replayed those final moments so many times every detail’s imprinted, he remembers the smell of that man.

Nutmeg and ember.

 


	2. Rough Hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alexisonfire - [Rough Hands](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2qTRS9oOwA)

Keith was having a hard time.

Sleeping. Working. Studying. _Living_.

He couldn’t concentrate on any of it and the fact that he couldn’t get his shit together pissed him off more than anything.

Compartmentalizing was not working.

Because, what if it was all connected? The mugger, the night at Bayard, the Galra finding him. As soon as Haxus had shown up, Keith had been sure it was either him or Myzak that had attacked him all those weeks ago. _That_ would make sense.

What doesn’t make sense is how suddenly everything feels twisted together, like barbed wire wrapping around his throat. Some noose that’s already been hung. Already has him trapped.

And that thought is stealing his sanity.

He walks into the trailer at the end of a long day, hoping to just clock out and get out. Maybe stare blankly at a textbook for a couple hours before throwing it against the wall and finishing off a bottle of rye just like the night before.

At least he still has goals.

So, he doesn’t immediately notice the huddle around one of the tables. Kolivan’s thick shoulders hunched over the others with Thace and Ulaz flanked by a couple graveyard workers Keith rarely sees. Their hushed voices barely audible.

“...it has to be—”

“—it’s too careless...”

They’re arguing over something laid on the table, too absorbed to see him come in. Thace notices first, nudges Ulaz whose eyes go wide before he’s clearing his throat. Three more sets of eyes jerking towards him. It’s their energy that makes him flinch, not exactly hostile but certainly not friendly.

“Uh…sorry. Just punching out,” he mumbles.

But he has to get past the table to do it. The two he doesn’t know—Ilun and Regris, he thinks—stand to let him pass, collecting their things. There’s some rustling and more quiet words, Regris murmuring, “Keep us posted,” before, what looks like, actually bowing his head to Kolivan.

Keith has to do a double take. Fights the urge to stupidly rub his eyes because he swears Ilun does the same before leaving, but not before darting narrowed eyes his way. He tries to duck his head in time but it’s a lost cause.

The slam of the trailer door shakes its hinges, the only noise left in the sudden quiet. Usually Keith’s fine with keeping his head down—more than fine—but the stiff air and tense shoulders gnaw at him.

“Everything okay?”

Kolivan winces, the movement so small it’s almost imperceptible except for a flexing of his jaw. Beside him, Thace and Ulaz pretend to be busy.

He’s just turning from the timesheets, zipping his jacket and reaching for his bag when he happens to glimpse at the table. Large black words rising up to greet his rapidly widening eyes.

**Animal Attack in Cypress Park**

Below it, a picture of a crime scene. Grey tarp draped over what’s obviously a body. It doesn’t cover everything, even from the terrible angle Keith can see thick blood splashed against the bushes, a dark patch soaking into the earth. But that’s not what leaves him pale and shaking. Not what sets his heart so loud in his ears he doesn’t hear Ulaz calling his name.

It’s the smaller picture beside it. The wide ugly face and beady eyes watching him, familiar and taunting. It’s Myzak. Bits of text flashing behind Keith’s eyes even as he shuts them tight.

_suspected bear attack_

_victim identified by dental records_

_throat torn_

Bile rises like a tide with the stars that crackle behind his spinning eyelids. He doesn’t realize he’s stopped breathing. Something grabs his shoulder.

“—eith?”

His name comes to him as if through sludge.

_”Keith!”_

Eyes opening, he’s met with Ulaz directly in front of him, both hands clutching his arms. Thace is behind, grabbing a chair that he’s promptly pushed into.

“Hey, are you alright?”

Blurred lines drag across his vision. His head pounds. “…’m...fine...”

A water bottle’s thrust into his hands, someone guiding it up and he chugs it back. The vignette of his sight receding with the cold that dribbles down his chin. Thace comes around to stand with Ulaz, twin expressions of concern staring him down. Past their heads, Kolivan watches. Thin lipped and arms crossed.

“I’m fine,” Keith tries again, lungs burning, “Just...didn’t have lunch.”

“You don’t look so good. You sure you’re okay?”

Rubbing the back of his hand against his eyes, he tries to discreetly wipe the cold sweat off his brow.

“Yeah...I’m good.”

But they’re all still watching. Still looking worried. He knows he hasn’t fooled them but he needs to get out of there and find that article. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt...” he waves his hands towards the table, “...whatever that was.”

That does it. The men before him shift uneasily. Thace and Ulaz throw each other a nervous glance but it’s Kolivan who speaks up.

“There was a bear attack in the park.” It’s quiet but it’s clear. Calculating. “The one by the library.” Deep blue eyes fix on Keith, searching for some sort of tell.

Keith schools his features as best he can while his mind screams. “Really? Was anyone hurt?”

“A man from out of town was killed.”

“Oh.”

Awkward stillness reigns supreme, everyone wary, everyone on guard. There’s nothing Keith can think to say without arousing suspicion. So, he tries to stand, shrugs off the arms that reach to steady him. “I got it.”

They give him space but they don’t move away entirely. It makes Keith feel like he’s being coddled, makes him want to gnash his teeth.

“You sometimes study at the library, right?”

It’s not what he expected. Has the scowl dropping off his face to blink at Thace. Slowly reaching out—movements careful, watchful—Thace cups Keith’s shoulder, heat melting into the knotted bulk of his deltoid. The softness in which Thace speaks unbalances Keith.

“Next time you’re there be careful, okay?”

Heart picking up and mouth gone dry, he stumbles his way to the door. “Yeah,” he somehow manages to croak, too many emotions in too little time, “okay.”

･･ ☾･･

But he’s not careful.

He’s not careful and he knows he’s an idiot when he returns to Bayard. Even as he tells himself it’s just for answers.

Keith had searched for anything about the attack on his way home. Had managed to find a site that posted the real pictures. The whole grizzly scene in all it’s muted red horror. Myzak had been barely recognizable. Half his face ripped to pieces. So much ichor and shredded tissue Keith had almost missed the giant chunk of his neck gone missing.

Bayard was the only lead he had to finding that stranger. To confronting him.

The atmosphere is different this time around. Feels darker, seedier. Even though Romelle lets him in, as rapacious as ever. He’s come on the weekend and it’s busy now. The rooms and its viewers packed. Some couples getting started without waiting.

Allura’s not in her office but rather behind the bar, helping Coran with the swell that nearly overtakes them. When she catches sight of Keith, she doesn’t look happy. Wisps of silver hair falling into the crease of her eyes.

“Keith, back so soon?”

It’s said casual but he can hear her apprehension, like she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop. He needs to play this right, can’t expose the taut, nervous zing that’s flying through him. “I was just passing by.”

From where she’s bent behind the bar, she freezes. Shrewd gaze telling him he’s not doing good enough but Keith knows he can be charming when he wants to be. He smiles at her pleasantly, even going so far as to scratch self consciously at his neck. A habit normally reserved for feeling bashful.

If she notices anything, she doesn’t mention it. “Well, as you can see, I’m afraid I’m unavailable tonight. Our usual bartender called in sick.”

Even though the lights are low Keith can see the bodies pressed against the bar.

“It’s okay,” he assures, allows his eyes to search for a head of white amidst the field of black. A fruitless endeavor this late in the evening with everything in full swing. “I actually wanted to ask about the dom you set me up with last time.”

Allura straightens so fast the cups in her hands clank together. From the other end of the bar Keith sees Coran look up in worry but there’s too many people for him to serve. His usually immaculate moustache even looks frayed at the ends.

But it’s nothing compared to the full-on rage that emanates from Allura. “That _man_ ,” she spits, “is no longer welcome here.”

It takes him a moment to absorb. To realize that the hatred that burns in Allura’s eyes is anything but performative. He’s never seen her look so cold.

“Did—” he stutters, all thoughts of charming out the door. “Did something happen?”

Teeth gritting, nostrils flaring, Allura’s image strikes as close to an avenging angel that Keith can imagine. He doesn’t think he hallucinates the ice that blankets over everything within a mile radius.

“He’s gone and I suggest you forget about him.” There is absolutely no room for argument.

The picture of Myzak, body pulverized with pieces torn, swims in his view. Could Allura know something? The way she stares into his eyes, how they hit straight in his core feels significant. It’s arousing and terrifying. Sets a niggling in his brain that wants to listen. To blankly take her words at face value and do it, but that’s not what he wants. He almost has to fight himself against the urge.

“But—”

“— _Excuse me,_ we’ve been waiting over ten minutes for our drinks!” a loud, angry woman calls at Allura. It breaks her magnetic stare, almost like releasing him from a spell that scrambled his thoughts. Leaving Keith shook.

While she’s occupied, he debates leaving without another word, needing to clear his head. But just as he starts to stand Allura’s slender fingers wrap around his wrist, catching him and his breath. “I’m sorry Keith,” she’s softer now, “can we talk about this another time?”

To be honest, he’s not so sure he wants to. Not with the way her gaze has left a wrung-out space between his ribs. But he inclines his head a fraction of an inch, not really an answer but she takes it as one. Slips away with a tiny smile to help Coran with the growing hoard.

Well, he supposes, that plan’s gone to shit.

Pushing through the bodies that fight their way to the bar, Keith swallows past the fear and doubt trying to strangle him. There’s nowhere else to go from here. Nothing to do but wait for whatever it is that nips at his heels to find him first.

It comes faster than expected.

One minute he’s almost at the door and the next he’s pulled down a branching corridor.

“What th—”

“Shhhh.” Romelle is suddenly in his face, dark pupils blown wide and hissing, “Be quiet.”

Hair prickles to raise along on his neck. Romelle’s hand pressed against his mouth and breathing heavy between them. She looks a little frantic, not at all like she had when he’d first come in. Her eyes dart to the entrance of the room she snatched him from, waiting for something but Keith can’t tell what. Can only zero in on the way her heart beats wildly against his chest. Doesn’t know what’s going on until what feels like minutes later, when her eyes flutter shut and the air rushes from her lungs as she steps away. Cleary relieved.

“Romelle?” Now that his mouth’s free. “What are you doing?”

Her voice is quiet when she speaks—eyes still fixed on the room—but hurried. “You want to see him, right? The man from the other night? I can take you to him.”

It feels like all the air gets sucked from the room. A rush to the head that has Keith leaning against the wall for a moment of support. But there’s something not right. A feeling that sends shivers down his spine as he watches Romelle.

Normally, this close, she’d do something like run her hands down his chest, or at the very least vie for his attention. But the person before him stands stark still, unblinking and hyper focused someplace away from him. A dull sheen against the whites of her eyes.

Searching past her shoulder, trying to see what she sees, he jolts, realizing where they’re standing. Though he only came for answers, awareness of exactly where this hallway leads ignites flames that lick their way up his clenching torso. As if sensing it, Romelle turns to him with a wicked, unnatural smile. “Follow me.”

He knows it’s not smart. Is maybe the dumbest thing he’s ever done given recent events but his feet follow her steps without second thought. Lead him further down the corridor until they reach a different set of stairs. Towards the private rooms.

Back when he’d worked there it was rare that he found himself in this area. The private rooms being exactly that. Private. A place where people could play without interruption.

Which also meant little security. In fact, as they get to the bottom, even the usual bouncer post is empty. It shouldn’t set the fire within higher.

But it does.

He tries his best to smother it anyway. “I’m—“ has to lick past drying lips and start again “—I’m not here for this.”

Romelle doesn’t slow but she does look over her shoulder, lips curving cruelly. “This is the only way.”

His mind screams at him to turn around. As if the strange way Romelle’s words ring in his ears isn’t ominous enough, the suffocating press of the hall should be plenty warning.

But even when she opens the door, he follows inside. Sees the low-lying table with all of its straps. The length of rope coiled and waiting. The paddles and toys proudly gleaming against the wall. He knows he should run.

“I—“

“Shh,” she pushes up against him— _finally_ something familiar—fingers over his lips. Reaching into a pocket she produces a dark blindfold, dangles it from the crook of a finger. “Put this on and he will come.”

Without waiting for affirmation, she shoves it into his hand then turns to leave.

It’s hard to think, there’s things he wants to say and he scrambles to speak them but nothing strings together. “R-romelle?”

She pauses at the door. Blank look back on her pretty face.

“Tell him I…” I’m not doing this. He can go fuck himself. Those are the logical things to say. “...I...take back my rules,” is what comes out instead.

The room feels small after she leaves. There’s already sweat at his hairline and he has no fucking clue what he’s doing. Did he really just consent to being at this man’s mercy? This time without protection?

“Fuck,” he says into the void.

It’s too hot. He has to rip his leather jacket off before he melts but refuses to touch the rest of his clothing.

At least he got rid of the rules. When the man comes, Keith will talk.

He finds a chair at the centre of the room and slumps into it, drops his head in his hands and tries for composure. The pulse at his wrists beats against his cheeks, rattles the bone beneath. Deep sucking breaths the only thing that gets it under control.

When he lifts his face, he’s met with his own reflection. A full-length mirror across the room highlighting disheveled hair and slightly manic eyes.

This is mad. He _knows_ this.

But his stubborn will won’t let him leave.

Setting his mouth in grim determination, he takes the blindfold still clutched tight and slides it over his eyes. Immediately feels the goosebumps up his arms.

It’s not long he sits there in the dark, maybe just a handful of seconds when the door clicks open and Keith jumps to his feet at the angry growl he hears when finding Keith still dressed.

“Stop,” he says, hands up in deference. “I just want to talk.”

Boots purposely fall heavy against the floor, one thunk at a time. A snarl that pings in his skull, curling forward. Instinctively Keith steps back, but not before the hint of spice cloyingly reaches his nose. “I…” It twists in the air. “...I want to know…”

The scent that follows wherever he goes grows stronger. Splits his train of thought in two when large, rough hands crush his shoulders. Force him back until he smacks the wall. Huge body, strong and unyielding surging up. Keith gasps and tries to defend but instantly finds himself spun. Arm wrenched behind his back, face pressed against glass.

Heart beating in his throat, every inch of him is smothered. Hard, sculpted muscle squashing into a pane that feels frozen compared to the blazing inferno behind. An enormous hand grasping both of his in a bruising grip that he struggles to break. All it earns is a fierce, warning growl. A waft of heat that seizes his gut. Invades his senses as if they were actually on fire. He even smells flames.

Beneath the blindfold his eyes snap open, entire body tensing when he whispers with sudden clarity. “It’s you.”

As if in confirmation the man grunts, shoving a leg between Keith’s own. Yanks at his hair enough to expose the side of his neck in perfect parody of that night. Pinned in a dark alley fighting for his life.

His veins throb, blood boils, but no fear comes. This time, when the man leans in, mouthing thick cord, Keith almost wants him to get rough. Has to stop himself from egging him to violence. A helpless groan rumbling through his back as soon as Keith thinks it.

Sharp tugs at his belt catch his attention, have him pushing back so the man has room to work and this is so fucked up. When a sweltering palm grasps his bulge, so close to setting him free, he groans. Cares about nothing else anymore.

The man bites at his shoulder, as hard as he remembers and he keens. Feels a firming twitch at his back and can’t help the words that tumble out. “You gonna give it to me this time?” Hums deep in a way he feels in his groin. “C’mon then.”

Expansive shoulders pin his chest, pants tearing off. Shirt snatched so savage they both hear it tear. When his bare cock rubs against the mirror, he trembles.

He’s already dizzy with need. The blindfold doing nothing but heightening his sense of touch tenfold. He feels all the places he wants this man to stroke. Those big, thick fingers that keep his hands locked could surely be put to better use.

A snort of humour ghosts across his skin. Tingles where wet trails of the man’s tongue lights. He steps away and Keith feels his absence too quick to mourn when he comes back seconds later.

He towers over Keith, large and imposing. Pulls those newly freed hands back into place behind him and that’s when Keith feels the sweet, braided rope wrap around his wrists. Eyes rolling back with the first double column tie.

His breath comes quick as the man works. That fire from before scorching his lungs and crisping his heart. He’s so hard he has to pop back, face still pressed as the man deftly wraps rope above and below his elbows. Cinches it up so it’s nice and tight and Keith’s arms can barely move.

The anticipation rolling through him is palpable. Like tendrils curving against his thighs and holding tight. His nipples harden as the man creates a simple harness, going back to roll each peaking nub between calloused fingers. Keith’s hushed, “ _fuck_ ,” ringing clear.

Smile twisting dangerously at his temple. Fingers digging to turn him around.

Hot breath feathers against his face. Sparking synapses jumping the distance between their lips. Close and treacherous. Burning where they lightly run his jaw, tongue darting out but never staying. Never truly connecting. Stuck on a ledge when all Keith wants is to jump.

His knees hit the floor before he decides it. A startled yet pleased noise emanating from the source of his dark desire.

“Come on,” Keith breathes, echoing his earlier sentiment. “Do it.”

There’s no teasing this time. No messy mouthing against denim. The chink of a buckle, pull of a zipper, soft whoosh of fabric sounding like the richest symphony. Keith licks at his lips, doesn’t even flinch when harsh hands tangle in his locks to jerk him forward. Mass shifting towards him, want barely contained, he shuffles on knees and strains in the rope. Imagines the hefty weight he’d felt at his back, stuffing his mouth. He’s salivating already.

A hand cups his chin, coarse thumb tugging at his lower lip. Keith drops it easily, allows the digit to slip inside and pump twice before hooking behind his teeth to widen his jaw. Tongue relaxed and drool pooling, Keith shakes when the man feeds him his cock.

The flushed, salty head is perfect. Turgid and heavy. Inch by delicious inch, he takes it in. Just like he’d hoped but even better. Long and thick and stretching his lips around solid girth. Fat vein pulsing against his tongue.

A stifled curse from above gives him a jerk. Low and melting his brain at an alarming rate. Keith suckles the massive cock, eager to please, furiously wanting to push on but the man is surprisingly coy.

There’s no place for it here.

When he tries to shush Keith’s desperate growls, Keith lets himself fall forward, spearing his throat on too much length and gagging at the thrust but he loves it.

Fingers tighten and the man holds him down. Keeps his cock deep until Keith can’t breathe and he’s gasping back with strings of saliva and pre-come stuck from lips to tip. He sucks on air, head whirling in total darkness but he barely recovers before the man shoves back in.

Keith chokes again, tears welling. Unhinges his jaw, nose pressed to hair, with spots springing up. A typhoon of arousal thundering in his ears. If he could, he’d grab the balls that smack his chin. Roll them in his palm and search further back. Milk this powerful man until he comes beneath Keith’s fingers forcefully.

But he pulls Keith off. Stands him up so quick he can’t even pretend to catch his bearings. Falling into a dense chest and dragged by flexing forearms. The scrape of a chair startling him back to himself.

The man holds him steady as he sits in the chair, guides Keith to his lap, back to front, where he tries to settle against that broad, heaving chest but he’s slid too far forward, perched precariously at the man’s knees. He knows without seeing that they’re facing the mirror. Keith proudly spread across bulging thighs. Legs so wide he has to hook his own under, only his inner, quivering thighs keeping him upright. Just the tips of his toes touching the floor.

He wants to move but can’t. Wants to reach back and touch himself but the ties stay firm. There’s heat in his belly, simmering hot and aching for more. A live wire that sparks on impact.

Suddenly slick fingers trail across his hips. Slide along the crease of his legs, over his thighs, the globes of his ass. It’s maddening how they touch him but don’t get close. Only made worse when the man scrapes his teeth against his back.

He can only imagine how he must look. Mottled skin, tensed muscles. Lip caught between his teeth to hold back a cry. The fingers dip lower, spread his cheeks and creep tantalizing south.

“Ahh!”

It doesn’t matter how hard he bites, when the rough pad circles his puckered muscle he lights like a firecracker.

Rushed and harsh the blunt intrusion pushes to first knuckle in the blink of bound eyes. Legs trembling, head dropping, wantonly moaning at the stretch. How one finger can feel so full and thick when its wet width penetrates deeper is a marvel.

“Ha-ah, _shit_ ,” he swears when another joins too soon but it splits him beautifully.

They thrust cruelly. Twist and scrape their coarse sides down spongy walls while damp hair falls in his face. Helpless and panting with every pump his burning hole tries to suck in.

He takes what he’s given, blanks on time and swears those fingers get thicker as the pressure builds. Lost to sensation, rolling what little his hips can move. Mindlessly asking for more and more and _so much more_.

“Fuck me,” he gasps, “fill me up.”

Hands so large they enclose half his waist grab him roughly, yank him back and lift him like a doll. Perch him on the crowning head he still remembers tearing his throat.

“ _Nngh._ ” There’s no dignity in the sound he makes as he slowly sinks down.

He’s going to break. Feels like he’ll rip apart when every movement shreds his rim and flays inside. When it’s almost more pain than pleasure regardless of the lube that squelches between them. But it’s not more pain. Holy fuck is it not.

It’s _everything_. It’s pushing past to welcome a feeling he’s never felt. A bliss that surges and shakes. Sloughs off dead weight till he’s born anew. Lit and floating.

Expertly, the hands on his hips work him down. He’s got no leverage but the man doesn’t need help. He bounces Keith on his cock. Grunts and buries his face in the crook of Keith’s neck but never stops fucking. Keith’s not sure he would, even if asked.

His head lolls, drops with his mouth and the wordless cries that want to scream out. Cock fucking all the way to where Keith can taste it, sure it’s bulging.

On cue, a burning hand presses just above his pelvis and he _can_ feel it. Can feel that wide hand against the relentless length that beats him, forcing his insides to squeeze and set a need so fierce.

“Let me see,” Keith rasps. He has to.

The man growls and fucks him harder. Keith crying out and choking on air.

“ _Need…_ ”

He’s rarely been fucked like this. So thoroughly possessed. Numb yet somehow able to feel it all. Pleasure crashing against pleasure.

“ _...to…_ ”

The words barely get out, too hard to speak around the overwhelming hunger and wicked blows.

“ _...see_.”

Because he does. He needs to watch as this man lays him out. Thick cock protruding while everything left of him shatters. Heart to rust. Bones to dust.

He can feel him hesitate, even through the driving force that fucks him into oblivion.

“Please.”

He’s never begged before. Not during sex, not on the streets, not when he had nothing. It should be painful but somehow this man wrings it from him effortlessly. Levels him hoarse.

“ _Please let me see._ ”

Bounding in his lap, palm tight on his hip, the man tears off the blindfold. Light that’s too bright burning Keith’s retinas. He blinks against the film, heart stopping in his chest at who’s watching. Intense eyes pinning.

It’s him.

 _His_ stranger.

Deep down Keith knew it would be. Feels slightly vindicated he’s not losing his mind. Should probably be afraid—this man is a merciless killer—but he’s not prepared for the ecstasy that claims him.

He’s just as frightening as before. Unearthly in the way those grey eyes seem to glow. White hair plastered to his face in sweat. But god his body. Those strong, corded thighs pistoning into Keith with a strength that should be waning but only picks up.

Harder Keith bounces, gasping and shaking. His arms, still tied behind his back, screaming. The man tilts him forward by the handle of his harness, raising his hips until they leave the chair. Hammering Keith mid air. The look of conquer on his face, of total surrender on Keith’s.

Hot lips suck at his spine. Teeth dig at his nape. Smoke overtakes him. He’s going to burst. All he needs is a touch that comes in blistering heat swallowing his neglected cock. Keith’s eyes roll at the hand that works in furious jacks. Burning from the inside, past recovery. Gulping for air that’s not coming but he sure is. In a violent shout that almost sounds painful.

And maybe it is with the way his consciousness leaves his body. Drifts above and watches as the grunts and swears and assaulting hips take their due and use his shell until the man is cursing and using those giant hands to hold him in place. Losing it with a guttural, inhuman sound.

Keith sees it all from far away. Muscles twitching in aftershocks that ebb and flow. Hardly noticing the dark look the man gives at the crossed marks left by the rope when he unites him. Blood rushing to freed limbs.

It’s the man that stands first. Switches positions so Keith’s in the chair while he collects his jeans. Keith’s still floating, lost in a haze of warmth and disbelief. Almost misses the well-built stranger try to duck out the room without a word.

Shit.

He scrambles for his pants, grabs his torn shirt but rips out the door before he’s fully dressed, sees the man almost at the stairs already.

“Hey!” he yells, vocal chords ruined. “Stop!”

But he doesn’t, in fact if anything he takes the stairs two at a time. Keith coughs to clear his throat, pulls his shirt over his head and this time his voice rings true. “Stop right fucking there!”

He’s almost shocked when the man actually does, when he turns to hiss in deadly quiet. “I don’t answer to you.”

The low timbre raises Keith’s hackles. From halfway up his height feels even more impressive, long shadow eclipsing where Keith stands below but he refuses to be intimidated. “Like hell I don’t deserve some answers after what you did.”

The man arches an eyebrow, drawing out every word when he speaks. “And what exactly have I done?”

“Are you kid—you murdered someone. Tore him apart.”

It happens so fast Keith doesn’t see it coming. The man just one stair above, leaning over Keith with bright yellow eyes. Cloyed scent overwhelming. “It would be wise to keep your voice down,” he snarls and there’s the fear that Keith’s been missing.

It slithers up Keith’s chest, seizes him by the throat. Eyes like saucers at the bared teeth he swears get sharper. They’re still in the stairwell, three quarters up. No one around. Absolutely nothing to stop this man from tearing Keith apart as well.

Apparently satisfied with his response the man sneers, runs his gaze down Keith’s paralyzed body and starts to turn.

Distantly, Keith registers he’s leaving. He’ll leave Bayard and Keith will never see him again. Never find out what’s happening. “I’ll go to the police.” It’s last ditch. The only card left to pull.

The scornful laugh is definitely meant to insult. “No, you won’t.”

“You don’t fucking know me. Answer my questions and I’ll leave you alone...otherwise.”

He can see the man doesn’t like being threatened. Big hands clench to fists and the bulging muscles shake in anger. Or maybe it’s only aggravation because he’s turning back, glaring but not nearly as venomous as before.

“Not here,” he spits like it hurts to say. Spins and doesn’t wait to see if Keith follows.

When Keith catches up, the man snatches his arm. Digs his fingers and Keith just knows it’ll bruise. Much like the points he feels spanning across his hips. But receiving those had been much more enjoyable.

･･ ☾･･

They walk in silence to a nearby bar, or in Keith’s case, mostly get dragged. It’s near the docks. Your typical nondescript hole in the wall. The type of place where weathered souls seek refuge if only because there’s nowhere else they fit.

The man orders beer that comes lukewarm and steers them to a corner booth away from eavesdroppers. The cracked vinyl seats squeak as Keith shifts, tacky duct tape leaving prints on his jeans but he’s more concerned with the nebulous man before him.

There’s no denying how striking he is. His chiseled profile a horrific kind of beauty. But even as he glares at Keith—daring him to speak first—his face is shuttered. Nothing like the way he’d looked half an hour ago. Punishingly stunning. Entire aura smoldering.

Keith grits his teeth, shakes away all thoughts of attraction. “So.” He starts easy. “Who are you?”

At least he thought it was easy. Until the man’s reply comes without hesitation. “No one.”

Narrowing his eyes, Keith tries again. “What do you want?”

But he doesn’t answer. Snorts instead and leans against the seat, arm stretched in feigned nonchalance. Pretends to examine his hand.

“Fine,” Keith growls, “I’ll go first. I’m Keith and all I want is to know what the hell is going on.”

Still looking away, the man smiles something dangerous, flashes it quick. “I know.”

It should probably make him worry; the fact this guy knows his name. But given the rest it’s just another drop in an overflowing bucket. He doesn’t even bat an eye. “Why are you stalking me?”

Another snort. Another charged silence. He’s doing it to goad him. Keith knows this tactic—is pretty fucking good at it himself—but he’s had enough of being left in the dark. His ire rises, pulls him up to lean aggressively across the table.

“Look, do you really think I _want_ to be here? I don’t need this shit and I didn’t ask for it. So, help me out here.”

He doesn’t think he’s gotten through. The man hasn't moved, doesn’t even seem to be listening. So, when his head drops a fraction and a wearily sighed, “Shiro,” comes out, it takes a second to figure out.

“Shiro? Like, that’s your name?”

The man—Shiro—nods stiffly.

“Okay.” Finally. “What do you want from me Shiro?”

“Maybe it’s not you that I want. Did you ever think of that?”

Keith’s increasingly sore back and thighs beg to differ. “If it’s not me then what just happened? And why’d you attack me that night?”

While speaking Shiro’s mostly stared at the wall, gaze far off. But now he meets Keith’s eyes before dropping them to the table. “Instinct,” he mutters.

“What?”

A little clearer, “I said it was instinct. I was...unprepared when I caught your scent. I didn’t think, I just acted.”

There’s darkness in his eyes when he looks back up. Grey almost black. Keith shivers and whispers before he can stop, “How could you smell me?”

Tilting his head, Shiro regards him. A wrinkle appearing between his brows. “You don’t kno—“

“What are you?”

Details from that night come flooding back. Things he’d willfully forgotten. Like the shadows themselves that’d held him in place, the way his attacker had seemingly vanished. The feelings that hadn’t felt like his own.

Suddenly Shiro smiles, sharp edged and glinting. “I thought you were clever. You haven’t figured it out yet?”

Keith thinks of the pictures from the crime scene. Crimson blood everywhere. Deep gouges through Myzak’s mangled body. The way Shiro had picked him from the ground like nothing.

“You…”

He’s only ever found Keith at night. Wild and unbreakable.

But it’s too crazy. He must be crazy for even considering—

“You’re not crazy. You just can’t accept the obvious.”

Keith gawks, actually slack jawed. “How did you...?”

“You think very loud sometimes.”

“I...”

_...What the actual fuck?_

Maybe it’s the delivery. The little bombs this, _man(??)_ keeps dropping. Or maybe it’s the fact that it’s all completely insane.

Whatever the case Keith is not processing.

Shiro, on the other hand, starts to look annoyed. “Can you just say it so we can move on?”

But Keith doesn’t believe in this stuff. It’s nothing but lies and embellishments turned into legend through centuries. The idea that something like...like…

“Vampires?”

Keith’s dug his nails into the wood of the table. Hasn’t even noticed the deep grooves until Shiro flattens a scorching hand over his. It shouldn’t feel so hot. Keith jerks.

“You asked,” huffs Shiro, leaning back and carefully folding his hands out of sight. Eyes unreadable but maybe not as cold as before.

And Keith? Keith can’t see past the faded green wallpaper peeling from its panels. The people scattered around the bar and oblivious to his entire world coming unhinged. He swallows hard but the knot in his chest stays firmly lodged. His hands are shaking. He needs to push on.

“Myzak.”

The growl that leaves Shiro is murderous. “What about him?”

“Why did you…”

“Kill him?” Keith nods. “He was already dying. I used that to send a message.”

Myzak had been brutal in the rings. Maimed his fair share of fighters as a champion who showed no mercy. But what Shiro had done?

Said man’s lip curls back. “The Galra deserve worse than that. And they will have it.”

There’s a hatred that surges forth, pours from Shiro uncontained. Poisoning the air and everything around. It twists his face from impish to vengeful. A glimpse of the monster he claims to be.

And this isn’t a fight that Keith wants. He’s done with that life and with the Galra. He never wanted it to begin with. “I don’t see what this has to do with me.”

“You’re important to them. They wouldn’t have sent so many after you otherwise”

“Trust me,” Keith says. “I’m not. I was never a member, all I did was fight. Whatever this is, leave me out of it.”

“I can’t.”

“I’m not asking. Come at me again and I _will_ go to the police. Let them deal with those low lifes.”

Shiro hisses quietly and Keith’s suddenly aware that the bar’s a little more silent than before. A quick glance confirms that they’re starting to draw attention. More than a few people watching from the corner of their eyes. It doesn’t matter, Keith’s heard enough anyway. He grabs his jacket and stands from the table but Shiro’s there too, roughly grabbing his collar.

“Listen to me.” His voice pitches dangerously. “They’re not going to stop. They’ll come for you again.”

“Then let them,” Keith snarls, jerking out of Shiro’s grasp. “I’ll handle it.”

He uses the momentum to shoot forward. Out the door and into a night that suddenly feels treacherous. Like the dense fog of the river’s alive and watching.

“You’ll need help,” Shiro says next to his shoulder, appearing out of nowhere to scare the shit out of him.

“Fuck.” He jumps, then promptly glares. “No, I don’t. Not yours or anyone’s. Just leave me alone.”

“Keith—“

“The sun will be up soon.” He can already see the outlines of buildings up ahead. The sky a slightly lighter shade of black. “Won’t you turn into stone or something?”

“That’s not—The Galra are more than just a few low lifes. They’re planning something and I know you’re the key.”

“No.” Keith finally snaps, turns to Shiro with the very last of his self control. “I’m not a key, I’m not important. I’m not anything, okay? You had your fun, you murdered Myzak, you got to fuck me, now let it go.”

“Enough!”

In numbed terror, he watches as Shiro starts to shift in front of his eyes. Bulk swelling to rise higher and higher until he’s towering over Keith like one of those distant buildings. Blurred lines of his body disintegrating in curls of smoke, golden eyes harsh and glowing. When he speaks, Keith can hear the hollowed echo in his mind.

“Do not presume to command me. The Galra took everything from me and I will have my vengeance. You will not—” Shiro cuts off abruptly. Those burning orbs catching something behind Keith’s shoulder. When Keith’s eyes follow, he feels his soul shudder.

At first it looks like only shadows. Branches moving with the glacial wind that whips Keith’s hair. But they start to merge, to grow, until there’s eight beings coming towards them. They almost look human but for the snarled bend of their bodies. Limbs curved at awkward angles, steps stuttering. Their dark forms slink forward as if sizing the two men up. Waiting to see what move they’ll make.

Surprisingly it’s not the twelve-foot vampire who’s first to make it. It’s Keith. Breaking under the weight of all this nightmarish fucking nonsense and really just needing to punch something. He runs at the nearest creature, drawing his knife and barely flinching when it bares its needle like teeth.

It swipes with long claws; each one a dagger Keith easily avoids when he ducks and slams his fist on it’s jugular. Or, where it would be if the thing were actually human. But for a small stumble back it hardly moves, Keith’s shock too slow for him to pivot when it springs. Latching to his side with piercing talons. He hears himself cry out before he can stop it.

All at once the thing is ripped from his body. Bloody gashes left across his stomach.

There’s a terrifying moment where he sees it writhing in Shiro’s massive paws, thrashing wildly before dripping red fangs descend. The screech it makes as Shiro tears through its neck will haunt him. Cut too soon when its head falls to the ground. Shrivels like rotten fruit.

Keith wants to be sick, but there’s not any time. Another creature scrambling up and knocking him off his feet. He crashes to the pavement hard, has about two seconds to gasp for air before serrated teeth snap at his throat. He manages to block, catching the thing inches from his face. The stink of its breath temporarily blinding.

He goes for the eyes. Dark beady things that still look vulnerable. A grating scream rending its lips when his thumbs dig in. Clawing at its own face, Keith finds the knife above his head, grips the handle with all his strength as he drives the blade into its chest. Orange flames bursting from the wound and consuming the beast in a brilliant flash.

Jumping to his feet, he’s crouched, ready for action but what he finds is a massacre. Piles of flesh, body parts and ash are all that remain of the creatures. A battlefield so gory Keith has to take stock to ensure _he’s_ still in one piece. And there in the middle, back to normal height and surveying the carnage in ghastly reckoning is Shiro.

His hair is streaked with viscera. Lower jaw and entire upper half covered in sticky dark blood. Looking very much like something from a horror film.

But this is real life.

It’s real when Shiro lifts one of the shrunken heads, extends a fork like tongue to lick at the pulp where once it was connected to a body. He grimaces and throws it away, deep growl almost tame compared to the noise of those monsters.

“They’re Galra,” he says, pinning Keith with a look. If he wasn’t currently a living vision of death, Keith might have called it smug. “Still think you don’t need my help?”

･･ ☾･･

Keith’s late when he runs into the scrapyard. His head throbbing and eyes like dark holes in his head but he’s there. He hurries to the trailer and hopes no one’s around so he can fudge his start time.

He hadn’t meant to be so late but needless to say sleep had not come easy. Every time he’d closed his eyes those _things_ had been there. One terror piled upon another.

By the time they’d cleared most of the evidence from that grim parking lot the sun was less than an hour from rising. Shiro had sent him home in a taxi and promised that this time he’d dispose of the bodies properly but that didn't stop Keith from seeing it all. Reliving it all.

Somehow managing to doze, he’d left his apartment that afternoon in five minutes flat, only realizing on the bus that he’d grabbed the same jacket he wore last night. Miraculously, a quick inspection found no blood or other miscellaneous parts so he’s mostly in the clear.

Or would’ve been if not for Ulaz casually sitting at one of the tables with paper and coffee in hand.

“Hey Keith. You look like shit.”

“Thanks,” Keith mumbles, stashing his bag and punching in.

“Seriously, everything okay?”

“Yeah, it’s fine— _what the?_ ”

Suddenly, Ulaz throws him behind a table, upending it. Pushing Keith to the floor with a frantic, “Get down.”

Keith freezes in place, terrified for a moment that more monsters have come. But then he remembers the sunlight pouring through the windows.

“Ulaz what are you—?” He tries to stand but Ulaz keeps him down, crouched over him protectively.

Not a second later, Thace comes crashing through the door, a large, gleaming sword held in both hands. “Where is it?”

“I don’t know,” Ulaz shouts, “I can’t see it.”

“But it’s daylight!”

“I know!”

You know what Keith thinks would be nice? Just one goddamn day of normalcy. While they shout amongst themselves, Keith uses their distraction to slide out. Popping up a foot away from the sprawled table.

“Guys, what the fuck?!”

Both men spin towards him and for the first time Keith sees the sword in Ulaz’s hand as well. Both handles purple and glowing. Their eyes widen when they take Keith in.

“It’s him,” Thace whispers.

“What?”

“It’s Keith!”

Ulaz takes a step closer and Keith defensively raises his hands. “Uh, guys?”

Taking another step, Ulaz lowers the weapon. Lifting his nose like he’s sniffing the air and then, he gapes. Thace looks on in shock.

“Keith,” he says, sounding winded. “Why do you smell like Vampire?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god there’s fan art, I can’t believe it!!! Thank you so so much [@flowerdicks](https://twitter.com/flowerdicks_/status/1073453265675706369?s=21) (very NSFW)


	3. Policy of Truth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Depeche Mode - [Policy of Truth](https://youtu.be/M2VBmHOYpV8)

“W-what?”

Thace and Ulaz stare at him like he’s grown a second, monstrous head. They don’t come any closer but Thace sounds out each word with growing malice. “Why do _you_ smell like Vampire?”

Keith doesn’t know how to react. There’s light blinding him, reflected off the weapons still pointed his way. He starts backing up.

“I-I…”

Ulaz raises his blade, moves to follow.

“Wait,” Thace cautions, “he could be thralled.”

They share a look. One Keith can’t decipher but then they’re stalking forward, and Keith hits the wall. Cornered.

“What are you doing?”

Lightning quick, Thace throws his sword. It slams into the drywall beside Keith’s head before he even twitches. Instinctively he lunges sideways, right into a hard chest. An arm wraps around his neck, the point of Ulaz’s blade coming dangerously close, triggering his fight or flight but Keith’s never been one to run.

He throws himself back, crushing Ulaz and loosening his grip. Keith jabs his elbow, connecting with bone and tries to dive free but fingers grab hold of his wrist and yank.

“Stop fighting!” Thace yells but Keith’s focused on it.

He tries to pull free but the grip is unyielding. Bruising his skin where it digs. Then he feels it, a pulse of energy, lit and racing from Thace’s fingers to run beneath Keith’s skin. It shocks as he goes rigid, a current burning him from within.

His vision goes double, cry caught between clenched teeth and he thinks he might hear something like, “too much,” before his body gives out and everything goes black.

･･ ☾･･

When he wakes it comes in stages. A rushing sound in the dark. Faint breath. Skull aching, sockets tender.

Something clatters and holds him in place when he tries to move, and he groans against a weary pain he feels deep.

“He’s waking up.”

“Finally.”

“Keith?” The voices swirl in mist but this one’s close, almost at the shell of his ear.

It has him jerking back too fast, head spinning and wrists popping in protest when cold metal bites into them. Blinking against pops of dizzy colour, things start to take shape. A blurry form in front of him. Possibly two others behind.

He’s propped against a table. No—he’s chained. Both hands in police grade cuffs wrapped around a leg where he sits. It forces him to bow, shoulders hunched.

“Wha...?” He tries to ask through cracked, dry lips and fleeting coherency.

“It’s okay.”

“...Where ’m I?”

“You’re safe.”

Vision sharpening, awareness filters with it. The room he’s in is dark, nothing visible past the halo of light cast from above. He’s not certain, but he’s pretty sure it’s Kolivan’s wide shoulders sitting in front of him. Folded arms and what looks like a frown.

“We had to be sure you weren’t compromised.”

It’s definitely Kolivan.

But then… “Why am I handcuffed?”

“Because you almost broke my nose!” Ulaz shouts from just beyond the light’s reach. A shushing noise following.

Blinking up, Keith makes out his scowl, hidden as it is behind an ice pack. He almost feels bad but then the memory returns.

“Well you jumped me.”

“I did not.”

“Thace threw a sword at my head!”

“Only to distract you!”

“Enough.” It’s not raised but they both shut it at Kolivan’s command. He takes a deep breath like he’s trying to centre himself. “Keith, we’re not going to hurt you. We’re here to protect you.”

“What?” He must be hearing things because Keith knows that’s impossible. No one has ever wanted to do that.

Uncrossing his arms, Kolivan’s look turns considering, resolved. He meets Keith’s disbelieving stare. “It’s time you know the truth.”

Like that’s his que, Thace steps forward, movements slow and calculated as he reaches into his back pocket, laying something down on the table. “Do you know what this is?”

When his hand pulls back, the silver gleam of a knife is revealed.

_Keith’s knife._

It looks the same as ever. Sharp point and flared base. The handle carefully wrapped. But somehow, Keith feels a difference.

Nervously, he licks his lips. Can’t help but feel like the edge of that blade is held to his throat when he answers. “My knife.”

“It’s more than that. It’s the weapon of a Blade of Marmora.”

With the other hand Thace draws another knife, so like Keith’s that his heart stops in recognition of the violet symbol laid within its hilt. The very same that marks his own.

“How—?”

Words die as Thace’s weapon flares to life before his eyes, transforming in a blinding flash of neon light. Undulating magic standing the hairs along his arms. A curved blade—the same that quivered inches from Keith’s head only hours before—stretches the distance.

Light seems to glow within its smooth, dark surface. Sharp edges wicked and glinting. Beautiful in the wake of Keith’s shocked awe. He can’t look away, can’t wrap his mind around what he sees, what it means.

“Where did you get this?” Kolivan demands, fingers inching toward the wrapped handle still laid on the table, breaking Keith from his trance.

“It—It was my father’s.”

“Actually,” Thace smiles sadly, voice gone quiet. “It was your mother’s.”

Like a falling hammer, he hears the words but they don’t make sense. Echoing in the suddenly empty chamber of his head. Out of everything he might have expected, this is the last. “My...mom?”

“She was one of our fiercest warriors.”

Before Keith’s shuddering frame, the three men bow their heads, paying a kind of respect he knows he’s not imagining.

It’s a few moments before Kolivan speaks roughly, plainly. “Krolia was on mission when communication abruptly went dark. She had infiltrated a group of extremists and knew the risks, she knew there would be no extraction. After months with no contact, we considered her MIA but two years later a distress signal was sent from her last known location. The code was outdated, but we dispatched nonetheless only to find nothing but casualties and the charred remains of an underground warehouse. In the end we were too late to save her.”

He knew she was dead, of course he did. But hearing it like this slices clean through. Quick and devastating.

“During our search for remaining factions, we discovered a family. A husband and young son living far in the desert. They were hidden well.”

Sometimes, when Keith closes his eyes like he does now, he can still feel the dry heat against his skin.

“It seemed only right to leave them in peace but still we watched over them whenever we could. When we learned of her husband's passing years later, Blades were sent to collect the boy and bring him here, but they were far too late. He’d disappeared like his mother had sixteen years before.”

“This blade,” Thace says, nudging Keith’s knife with a hushed, reverent tone, “is the last piece of our fallen sister.”

Keith breathes in ragged, teeth gritting to stop the hot leak that wants to gather at his lashes. Clenched fists not enough to temper the emotion raging taut. It’s too much. Confusion and pain a torrent storm that rips apart his foundation. Quietly he whispers. “So what?”

When he gets no response his head snaps up, the fire in his eyes a blazing screen to three stunned faces. “What do you want from me?”

“We don’t want anything. We just—”

“You left my—“ he chokes on the word _mother_ “—her to fend for herself and now you expect...what? Gratitude?”

“No, we—”

“And I’m just supposed to believe this? That you’re what? A secret band of mercenaries or some shit. The blade of...of...whatever the fuck you call yourselves.”

“The Blade of Marmora.”

“I don’t fucking care!”

“Keith—“ Kolivan tries, twitching like he’s about to reach out but Keith flinches back with a hard, “Don’t!”

There’s little he can do, cuffed as he is, but glare and thrash at his restraints. Of all the shit to pile on, he thinks this probably takes the cake. He yanks and pulls but all it does is wear at tethered nerves and gouge his skin until it’s raw.

Kolivan and the others look so calm in the face of his ire. Who knows how long they knew.

Keith knows it’s pointless to keep struggling. It drains his stores in one fell swoop. The past month crushing its weight until all that’s left is bone weary exhaustion. Sagging in his seat, he wonders why life continually has to beat him down.

His breaths are heavy, lacking the will to do more than hang his head and ask with defeat falling from every syllable, “What are you going to do with me?”

“Help you.”

He snorts, they’re about ten years too late. “What do you even do?”

Straightening his back, Ulaz puffs out his chest. “We’re like guardians. Warriors that protect humankind from the supernatural. We maintain balance between light and the dark.”

Keith can’t help the scoff at the back of his throat. It earns him narrowed eyes.

“Don’t pretend you know nothing of the underworld. You still reek of vampire. No one survives without knowing who they’re dealing with.”

“So, the Blade of Marmora are vampire hunters?”

Ulaz looks downright offended at that. “Not hunters, we’re enforcers. And you can just call us Blades.”

“Like the shitty Wesley Snipes movies?”

“No,” both Kolivan and Thace immediately spit.

While Ulaz mutters something that sounds suspiciously like, “I thought they were cool.”

Keith leers. He’s still angry, still confused, but they obviously believe what they say.

“Keith, we—no, _I_ failed you,” Kolivan begins. “I should have ordered your retrieval sooner. I should have protected your father but...it was an error in judgement I hope you’ll allow us to fix. You’re one of us, let us help you.”

Looking away, Keith stares at the surrounding darkness and shakes his head. “I’m not one of you.”

“Your mother's blood runs through you. It was spilled to protect you. Don’t turn away from us, there is much we can teach you.”

“Like what? I can look after myself.”

In a swift move, Ulaz flips Keith’s knife from the table, grabs it on its point, offering Keith the handle. “So, then you’ve already awoken your blade?”

He doesn’t know what that means but he wants his knife back. Blindly reaches for it before hissing in pain when the cuffs rub his open wounds. “Kinda hard when you won’t release me.”

There’s movement to his right, Thace looking like he’s going to uncuff him but Kolivan blocks with an outstretched arm. “First,” he says, eyes flashing and tilting his head in consideration. “Tell us what happened last night.”

Now Keith narrows his eyes. Rolls his jaw and doesn’t appreciate his freedom held hostage but he lost the fight before it began. It doesn’t stop him from petulantly staying silent, contemplating what to confess and what to gloss over.

“Come on,” Thace coaxes, “work with us.”

“...I...was attacked last night. I don’t know by what, but they definitely weren’t human.”

“Why?”

Keith shrugs. “I don’t know, Sh—” he bites his tongue, an urge he can’t explain stopping him from mentioning Shiro. “Shit happens? A few weeks ago, I was approached by some thugs I used to fight for. Maybe they couldn’t take no for an answer.”

“Who were they?”

“Just some low-level criminals sent by their boss. They call themselves the Galra.”

The look of shock adorning all three faces throws Keith back. The pallor of Thace’s skin turns white and Ulaz actually gasps audibly.

“Did you say Galra?”

Keith shifts in his seat, tension in the air suddenly thick enough to suffocate. “Ah, yeah?”

“It can’t be,” Thace whispers, glancing at Ulaz who still looks horrified.

Even Kolivan’s usually stoic face looks deeply disturbed. “Keith,” he says, “that’s impossible. They were destroyed by your mother.”

･･ ☾･･

Keith rubs at the wraps secured tight around his wrists. Two days later and the regenerating tissue itches like crazy.

The blades had kept him in that room for the better part of the night. Though once they’d recovered from their shock, he’d finally been freed and his wounds tended under their urgent questions. Wanting to know all Keith knew of the Galra.

It wasn’t much. He’d purposely turned a blind eye to whatever the gang had been up to. He knew drugs were sold and money laundered during the fights, but he never knew _why_. And Kolivan hadn’t been particularly forthcoming with the blades knowledge either.

Not that Keith minds.

Honestly the more he learns, the more he wants to bleach his brain and start again. Because his mother had been some fucking superhuman soldier? Had sacrificed herself to end the Galra that were actually more of an underground cult and here he’d been fighting and earning them money for years. The sick pool in the pit of his stomach churns.

He’d never known his mom—thanks to the Galra he’d never been given the chance—and now, knowing she’d loved him, had died protecting _everyone_ rather than simply run away from her family, it gouges more than he could’ve guessed.

Keith blinks against the tears he still refuses to let fall. A longing for something that never was not worth the torture.

Instead his lets his mind stray. Contemplates the predicament he finds himself in. Lost within it’s tangled web. The worst is that he knows he’s just a pawn. A tool to be used. Everyone with something to gain besides himself.

Closing his eyes, the flash of fangs and twisted faces assault him. He flinches back, presses the heels of his palms against aching eyelids and groans.

God, his life is so fucked up.

As he stands there, head bowed and trying not to fall to pieces, bright light breaks through his skin, the orangish glow jerking his head as he hopes to see an approaching bus but finds a solitary SUV instead. It’s black and sleek. Much too expensive for this part of town.

With narrowed eyes he watches it pause at a stop sign, tinted windows blocking it’s interior and leaving it’s passengers a mystery. It only stalls for a second, no longer than necessary, but still he heaves a sigh when it turns the corner and drives out of sight, the temporary squeeze in his chest releasing.

For no real reason at all, it makes him think of Shiro.

Though he hasn’t seen him since the night he practically eviscerated a demonic fleet, Keith knows he’s close. Sometimes—like now—he thinks he can actually feel Shiro nearby. It’s just an inkling at first. This unsettling feeling that’s not necessarily fear but something close. A submerging presence diaphanous as smoke.

Looking around the deserted bus stop, he sees nothing but empty buildings and crystal stars. A rare clear night that means the air’s cold enough to cloud his breath. He wraps his scarf over chafing lips and huffs.

“So, you’ve gone back to stalking me?” he asks the darkness. Earning no response but then he hadn’t really expected one. “If you’re using me as bait, I’m gonna have to politely ask you to fuck off.”

He thinks he might hear a snort, but it floats away before it can solidify. Sighing, he tucks his hands under the warmth of his arms and leans against the glass partition.

If Shiro wants to play it that way than fine.

Unbidden, he thinks back to those creatures from before. The ones that had looked like death incarnate and moved like nothing Keith’s ever seen. Awkward but fast. The only thing faster was Shiro’s attack. Sharp and with quick precision. Great sweeping movements that turned his strike into a dance of frightening accuracy. It’d been more than combat, it’d been an art.

“Did I impress you?” A husky voice asks where no one had been a moment before.

“Jesus!” Keith jumps, black curls of smoke dissipating beside him. He steadies himself against the glass and glares. “You really like doing that, huh?”

Solid and now standing at his side, Shiro grins, flashing fanged teeth. He’s human sized again, though still about a head taller than Keith. His dark overcoat wrapped slim around his body, displaying the breadth of his shoulders and trim of his waist. He looks dangerous, powerful.

Swallowing, Keith looks away. “Is your plan just to keep following me around?”

“Always so sure it's all about you,” Shiro chides, eyes lazily sweeping past Keith to peer in the direction the SUV had gone.

“Well what _have_ you been doing then?”

Humming, Shiro tips back his head, white bangs falling from his angular face as he fills his lungs. Inhaling deep like the crisp air is a welcome salve. He runs so hot that maybe it is. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

The hint to his tone is almost...playful. A far cry from the gruff, stilted answers and combative man who clung to his secrets like the last bits of himself just a few nights before. Keith wonders if maybe he’s gotten a lead, discovered what the Galra want.

“No,” Shiro murmurs, a little of that lightness diminishing. “It seems the Galra guard their secrets closer than me.”

Fighting the flush that wants to creep across his face, Keith burrows further into his scarf. “Stop reading my mind,” he growls to Shiro’s grating laugh.

Keith scowls at the road, tracking the way the shadows of their shelter stretch across it. With no clouds and little wind they remain perfectly still, no sinister movements or growing shapes. Just negative copies of the steel and glass around them. Two large, darker shadows nestled within. Even from his imprint Keith can see Shiro watching him. He imagines a cold, assessing gaze, or maybe a smirk and quickly regrets it when he hears a rough chuckle.

There has to be some way to block his thoughts.

“Doubtful,” the vampire taunts.

Instead of acknowledging, Keith checks his phone, pretends not to notice when Shiro inhales once more, head craning further in Keith’s direction.

“You smell different tonight.”

Keith ducks his head, biting his tongue.

“Hmmm, what could it be?” When he gets no response, Shiro steps closer, voice suddenly a purr. “Going to ignore me then? Fine. There’s better things to do than talk.”

It’s low and dripping, full of intent. For a split-second Keith’s eyes fall closed. A damning warmth trickling through his abdomen with memories of Shiro tying him up. Holding him mid air as rope bit at his skin.

“Well…” Attention snaps to Keith’s caught breath, a wicked grin spreading. “Seems I did impress you after all.”

The air between them crackles. The bulk of Shiro’s broad frame eclipsing Keith’s view of the street, high voltage blood pumping at the sight. Rushing like lightning down his veins.

“You don’t have to be afraid.” Shiro lisps as his fangs descend.

There’s no place to hide, the cold of the shelter already at Keith’s shoulder, so he stands his ground. Even raises his chin, indignant. “Who says that I am?”

“You’d be wise to.” Cunning, silver discs meet his glare. Shiro’s nostrils flare and pupils’ contract to slits when he stops only inches away. “Your impulsiveness is intoxicating.”

Keith feels like he’s falling, like he’s tumbling through a tunnel that leads to dark lips and a hungry mouth when he mumbles, “’m not...” but can’t finish. Even he knows denying is a lie.

The vampire leans. Moves as though it’s Keith that pulls him in and Keith feels the same tug. A magnetic force dragging them together.

“Shiro,” he tries but it sounds more like a plea than a warning.

Then all at once the space is void. Cold air hitting like a wall that slaps Keith from his stupor. He doesn’t even hear the sound of Shiro smacking the ground thirty yards away, muffled by the explosion of power that must’ve thrown him.

And there, behind a brilliant flare of dying light, a dark figure crouches between them.

It glances back, black mask with three glowing eyes and two sets of lines hiding a face that appears to be human. Normally Keith would spring to action, but something makes him freeze, sticks him in place. The bright purple light of its armour paralyzing.

Shiro has no such hesitation, rising with lips peeled and a vicious snarl, he leaps in the air, hands turned claws looking razor sharp. It happens in the blink of an eye, but the figure’s already rolled away, pavement cracked beneath the fall of Shiro’s knee where once it stood.

Their attacker faces off, Shiro now closest to Keith and growing in size with a ripple of air He doesn’t wait to fully transform, shouting as he throws himself forward and Keith finally finds his feet, knife raised and about to charge when a solid kick to his chest sends him flying. The streak of a leg zooming past his vision as it leaves his sternum to wrap around Shiro’s neck.

Both men sprawl to the ground and this time Keith recovers fast, up and charging before he’s struck again across the jaw, pops of colour bursting behind his eyes. But as he stumbles the person moves with, facing Shiro and parrying deadly blows. They move so fast Keith can hardly keep up, looking for an entry but every time he tries he catches a limb.

Growling in frustration, Keith aims for the assailant’s feet, reaching for its hood, but he’s knocked off balance, dropping to his knees and raising up just in time to see Shiro soaring above them. Face a vicious, warped version of himself and shining like a reckoning angel. Keith thinks he’s got the upper hand when suddenly a pointed blade flashes through the air. Shiro managing to twist just in time but the familiar weapon has Keith’s stomach dropping out.

Fuck, fuck, _fuck._ He should’ve known.

Keith’s choking for air as he pulls to his feet, hammering heart about to shoot past his ribs when he sees the blade member round on Shiro. He attacks on all sides, taking all of Shiro’s strength and focus and pushing him back. Keeping Keith out of reach.

They’re a perfect match. Keith hadn’t thought someone could challenge Shiro’s skill but as the vampire ducks and weaves, even as he towers over the warrior, he can’t make any gains. Trails of smoke surround them, trying to pick at the spots the blade leaves exposed but he manages to avoid them at every turn. A few tendrils even hover in Keith’s direction and he realizes belatedly they’re trying to get to him. The blade notices too, redoubling his efforts and slicing at the ones that go Keith’s way.

Though all it does is pass right through, Shiro howls, rage evident as he lunges, gets his talons into a shoulder before he’s thrown over it and landing hard. Shiro tries to regain his footing but slips as though he’s injured, it’s only a small lapse but it’s enough for the blade’s sword to slash across his arm. Thick, black blood splattering the cement. A well-placed kick has Shiro falling heavy. Eyes flashing gold and fangs bared.

There’s a brief second where they dash to Keith, where Keith swears he can see decades of suffering swim to the surface and he’s moving before he’s even aware.

The grey steel blade leaves a sickening violet line as it swings towards Shiro’s neck.

He’s not going to make it. He’s going to see Shiro’s severed head before he can stop it and it warps and shreds until he cries out in fear. “No!”

And then his arm is shaking in its socket and it takes a while for Keith to realize it’s from the force of a blow and not his overwrought nerves.

Because extended from his arm is the handle of his knife. The blade that’s lodged over Shiro’s bared neck not stuck in bone but rather against _his_ weapon. One that’s no longer a knife but a sword.

It’s curved and flat and beautiful. The shocking bright light that runs down its edge identical to the one pressed against it. Keith raises his wide, astonished eyes towards the blade member and doesn’t need to see past their mask to know their shock. It’s mirrored in himself.

Shiro, on the other hand, takes the moment to strike. Body swelling and claws extended, he plunges them deep into the sides of the stunned member still facing Keith. His body jerks with the sinking of each point, spine bowing and then he’s hurled, thrown like a puppet without any strings that smacks against the cold asphalt and doesn’t get up.

Keith stares in horror at the blade still clasped in his hand. At the bright, ruby blood dripping from the tips of Shiro’s fingers. He drops his knife and runs towards the crumpled body that’s deathly still.

“Oh god,” Keith breathes, grabbing at the person’s lolled head and trying to rip off their mask and its chilling unblinking orbs.

It disintegrates at his touch, peeling back to reveal a pale face and large, staring eyes. Eyes that belong to who he thinks is—“Regris?”

The man groans, tries to speak but clenches his teeth in pain. The sides of his suit gleam. Like this, Keith can’t tell how bad it is but judging by the spreading sheen it’s not good.

“Can you move?” Keith asks at the same time Shiro demands, “Who are you?”

He hadn’t noticed Shiro come up, but he does a double take at the unbridled anger he sees. When Regris can’t respond, struggling just to breathe, Shiro presses his foot against an oozing side. “I said who are you?”

“Stop!” Keith shouts but Shiro does not relent.

“You’re a Blade of Marmora. Why are you here?”

Regris tries to roll free, garbling a shout as the heel grinds his ribs.

“What business do the Blade have here? Tell me!”

The smoke around Shiro swirls and writhes, pouring from his body as though the rage he’s spewing roasts him alive. Still kneeling at Regris’s head, Keith reaches out and grabs Shiro’s foot, pushing it off.

“Shiro. Stop. I _know him.”_

Glowing eyes snap to him, intensely smouldering. “How?”

“I-I work with him...I—” he’s about to elaborate when a weak hand paws his chest and draws his gaze, Regris’s lips already moving.

“Ko—” the man wheezes then coughs, wincing against the pain. “Kol...ivan.”

“Kolivan?” Keith has to lean back, just enough to see the tiny nod of Regris’s head before his eyes roll back.

“Hey…Regris?”

There’s no response. Shoulders gone slack and breath shallow.

Panic starts to set in.

Looking once again to Shiro he finds nothing but cold fury in the eyes of the vampire that stands above them. Keith casts his gaze around, searching for what he doesn’t know. His brain too jumbled to sort itself.

“Fuck, fuck.” He grabs at his hair, feels a hot stickiness against the strands and realizes his hands are streaked with blood. “Shit, okay...Shiro help me.”

“Why?”

“We need—” Keith tries to get his arms beneath Regris, tries to lift but he’s dead weight. “—He needs Kolivan. We have to get him to the scrapyard.”

But Shiro makes no move to help, instead staring him straight in the eye when he says in cold finality, “No.”

Keith almost can’t believe it. Regris slips from his hold and he grabs him just before his head hits the ground. Grinding his teeth, he strains to pull the man up, searching for Shiro once more only to find the back of him walking away.

“Wait.”

He keeps walking.

“Hey, stop!”

He doesn’t.

“I’ll tell you everything.” Keith’s desperate. “Everything I know just please, _help me!_ ”

That gets Shiro to stop in his tracks, slowly taking time to turn and assess. Eying Keith and the man in his arms like hideous bugs whose guts were scraped from the bottom of a shoe.

“Everything?”

“Yes! Everything, _anything_ , please.”

The rasp from Regris’s cold lips is terrifying. So rough and rattling, Keith’s convinced they’ll cease at any second. He finally gets his arms beneath Regris’s own only to have the entirety of his weight lifted when Shiro scoops him up. The vampire throws the lifeless body over his shoulder and grabs Keith’s wrist with startling ferocity.

“Hold on,” he growls and suddenly everything falls away.

The soot of Shiro’s smoke encircles their heads, their bodies. Whipping fiercely around and Keith feels like he’s in the middle of a hurricane. The world outside raging and tearing apart. And then it dissolves. First the wind and then the smoke, and then they’re standing in the middle of the scrapyard. Gates still locked, trailer dark and empty, and the tiny house Kolivan occupies along the edge.

“How did you...?”

Shiro gives him a look that has him quickly biting his tongue. He lets the rest of his question die and turns towards the house, doesn’t have to look to know Shiro follows with Regris in tow. They don’t even make it five steps before the front door bangs and Kolivan comes rushing out.

Even though he’s in nothing but a thin white tee and heather grey sweats, he’s never looked deadlier. It’s the look in his eyes, reflecting the purple glow of his blade. For the first time Keith sees the commander within.

“Keith get back!” he shouts, the tip of his blade pointed in Shiro’s direction. “Don’t come any closer.”

“Kolivan please, it’s Regris.”

With widening eyes Kolivan notices the body over Shiro’s shoulder, how hanging limbs make no moves of their own.

“Drop him,” Kolivan snarls, years of hostility leaking into those two little words.

Keith tries to sooth, “He’s only—” but suddenly Shiro drops Regris like a sack of dirt, no effort to be careful. “...helping,” he finishes, shooting off a glare.

Things move quickly after that. Kolivan tears forward, lifts Regris and heads inside. The couch of his tiny living room becomes their makeshift workspace, Kolivan barking orders and Keith following. Clothes cut off, compresses pressed, blood smeared thick and red as he tries to clean hideous wounds. There’s two deep, long gashes that run the length of each side, jagged edges hanging loose. The smell of dirt and iron so strong Keith has to breathe through his mouth to dull it. Shiro stays in the corner, doesn’t move or help one tiny bit, but his eyes are sharp. When other blades start to arrive, Regris looks worse.

“You invited him in?!” Ulaz is incredulous to find a vampire standing in Kolivan’s house. His hair is wild despite its short length, sticking up in every direction. He’s come alone but Keith doesn’t have time to wonder about Thace.

“He helped me,” Keith says, clipped. Effectively cutting Ulaz’s rant before it begins.

Besides a glare and the not so secret placement of his body so Shiro remains in sight, Ulaz says nothing more. Another member, Ilun, shows up and Keith finds himself being pushed from Regris’s side. With nothing else to do, he drifts to the edges, doesn’t realize he’s standing by Shiro until the vampire speaks.

“He’s not going to make it.”

Horrified, Keith turns to him, not sure what he expected but the blank, unfeeling dark of Shiro’s gaze makes him flinch.

“I’ve seen death enough times to know what it looks like.”

Around them, the blades are huddled, the tight space of the room not so accommodating. Garish yellow carpet soaking the blood that’s started to pool. They surround the small couch, whispering but doing no more than Keith had been. The holes across his ribs still torn open. Yet somehow they don’t look scared, or even resigned. When Thace comes rushing into the house, Keith learns why.

There’s a figure behind him, cloaked in long, deep violet robes, white mask covering its face with the chin stretched down to a point. He gets just the briefest glimpse and then everything goes to shit.

Where Shiro was once beside him, now he’s vaulting through the cramped space. Fangs bared with a ghastly cry. It’s primal and beastly. Sounds like he’s about to tear everyone limb from limb but suddenly he’s thrown across the room, smashing into the wall and held. Keith moves but not before the rest of the blades have drawn their weapons and circled the vampire screaming in rage.

“I’ll kill you!” Shiro shouts, thrashing against invisible holds. He may be pinned to the wall but he’s still terrifying. The whites of his eyes gold and lit, pupils black as coal.

The hooded figure’s hand stretches out, fingers vibrating in what Keith can only assume is the power used to keep Shiro contained. With knife in hand it’s not even a thought before it’s sparking free, transforming before his eyes. Keith charges the figure only to have Ulaz meet his blade and block his path.

“Stay back,” he warns.

“Get out of the way,” Keith returns, putting his strength behind the clashing swords, eyes glued on the figure.

Ulaz looks astonished but there’s no time to argue for in that moment Shiro breaks free. He lands like a cat light on his feet, columns of smoke surrounding each member, their startled cries muffled as Shiro attacks. Two blades are down before they know it, a third managing to raise their sword just in time to have it knocked loose. Shiro’s a flash of whirling brutality, not killing but certainly not pulling punches. How Regris managed to last so long against him is a mystery.

He’s almost at the masked intruder, narrow focused and moving with such speed he doesn’t see Kolivan’s blade come crashing down, the blunt end slamming into Shiro’s skull. He falls and Keith takes the distraction to jump around Ulaz, planting himself between vampire and blades.

“Stop!” Keith shouts, sword raised.

The blades are aghast. “Keith, what are you doing?”

Behind him, Shiro tries to counter but he’s slow and disoriented, Keith easily pushing him back. “You too.”

“You know what the Druid’s have done,” Shiro yells at Kolivan, “how can you let this one live?”

“He’s here to heal our brother,” says Kolivan, eerily calm in the face of Shiro’s display. A tightening of his lips the only hint of true feelings.

“You can’t be serious!” Shiro shouts but Kolivan has already turned back to the man so pallid Keith thinks he may have already passed.

The figure—the Druid—follows Kolivan’s lead, most of the blades as well. Only Thace and Ulaz linger between their brothers and Keith and Shiro. Keith has no idea what a Druid is or what they’ve done. For the first time since Shiro’s tirade he really looks at him. Sees the shaking fists and rapid breaths. Sees an expression he almost mistakes for pure anger before something else breaks free. Something an awful lot like fear.

Shiro’s eyes are no longer gold but they’re not entirely grey. His face more pale than normal. He watches the Druid as it bends over Regris, tensing as though he expects it to strike at any moment.

“Shiro?” Keith asks, severely unnerved. Like this, Shiro almost looks human.

It’s that thought that has Shiro’s daze snapping, has the heartless shroud replacing his cracked facade and makes him grab for Keith tight and unyielding.

“There’s nothing we can do here, come.”

The ash around them starts to stir before Keith can even reply.

Ulaz jolts. “You’re not taking Keith.”

“I can and I will.” Shiro snaps.

The two blades start like they’re about to lunge for him when Keith mumbles, “It’s okay.”

Shiro’s right, they can’t do anything for Regris as they are. With the straining animosity the best he can do is leave and take Shiro with him.

“Keith, you can’t trust him.”

Though the black cloud is picking up speed, Keith can still see the faces of his coworkers, pulled tight with clear concern.

“And I can trust you?” he asks, just before the darkness closes in and the ground at his feet gives.

･･ ☾･･

They land in an entryway and Keith’s too tired to worry about the fact it’s his building’s lobby. Shiro’s probably been watching him for awhile, maybe even long before he ever approached. The fact he knows where Keith lives is just another thing he really can’t deal with right now.

Silently they pad up the stairs, the fall of Keith’s boots soft against steps and he wonders why he can’t hear Shiro’s at all. He knows he’s close, can practically feel the hot breath down his neck. When they get to his apartment, Keith fumbles for his keys, about to ask what Shiro wants when the man speaks.

“You lied to me,” he states, beautiful face back to cold, composed passivity. Nothing playful, nothing kind. It chills Keith more than the night.

“About what?”

“You’re not human. You’re a Blade of Marmora.”

A weary sigh escapes Keith’s chest. “I’m not.”

“You have a blade.”

“It was my mother’s.”

Keith can’t stand the way Shiro’s shrewd gaze pins him in place. He tries to look away but finds his eyes locked. He can feel the vampire searching his mind, seeking the truth. Instead of fighting it, Keith opens, managing not to wilt under Shiro’s piercing stare.

“You said you’d tell me everything,” Shiro growls, standing tall so he can glower. “But you don’t know anything. You don’t even know who you are.”

_You’re right_ , Keith thinks. _I’m a fucking mess_.

He wants to change subjects, wants to ask Shiro why he reacted that way to the Druid but all at once he can’t speak. Any noise that wants to rise choked off at the base of his throat.

A vile stretching of Shiro’s lips that’s not a smile but so much worse reveals sharp, elongating fangs.

“What good are you to me?” he mocks, reaching a finger to run the length of Keith’s jaw.

Keith wants to protest but he sees Regris looking dead on the couch. Kolivan’s disappointment, Ulaz’s panic, even Shiro’s temper feels like his fault.

“Don’t worry,” Shiro coos, stepping closer, sniffing cold sweat that breaks across Keith’s skin. “Let’s just go back to what you’re good at.”

And then he’s up against the door. Shiro’s rough tongue licking a stripe across his pulse and even rougher hands grabbing at his waist. The vampire slots a leg between Keith’s thighs and sucks at his collarbone. Keith groans with the pressure, tilts his head and feels the haze of heat settle between them. Sharp nails scratch beneath the hem of his shirt. He wants to pet too but can’t move.

_”You can’t trust him,”_ rings in his ears and instantly snaps back to himself.

Stop, he tries to shout but Shiro’s got him gagged. Instead he projects his thoughts as loud as he can. _Shiro, stop!_

_But why?_ Shiro’s voice flows through his mind, soft and caressing. _I know that you want it_ , he squeezes the bulge that’s already stirring, _don’t deny me._

It’s a command if Keith’s ever heard one but he’s never been good at listening. He grits his teeth and attempts to stop the shiver that wants to overtake.

_No!_

He manages to push off the wall but all it does is grind himself against a hard-lined body. Shiro still pulls back in surprise, growls and grips each of Keith’s wrist within a massive paw, pinning them above his head. His other hand teases up Keith’s shirt, pushing under poker hot to slide over sculpted pecs and grab at Keith’s throat.

“You can’t fight me. Blade or not, you’re mine.”

His voice paralyzes, calls back to that night in the alley except this time Keith knows what he’s facing. When the first hint of desire hits him, he screams internally. Rage at being forced to feel something that’s not his. He swells in his jeans, rubs against the thigh Shiro pushes into him. Limbs like honey, liquid and warm and begging to melt.

He needs to be fucked. Needs Shiro to mount him and put him in his place and these lustful thoughts are definitely not his own.

No. _Shiro, don't._

_I love it when you say my name_.

_Stop it_.

Teeth graze against his neck, throbbing just below each point.

_I want to hear you beg for me._

His body’s already doing it. Tiny rolls of his hips, head tilting to expose more flesh. Warmth pooling and leaking out his trapped cock. But his mind still rebels, still yells against his captor and tears shredded bits of his larynx. Shiro’s grip on his wrists is so tight his fingers are numb and pulsing. Keeping time with his frantic heartbeat.

With each pulse they prick like pins and needles, heat and static charging down each carpal. And then it starts to change. Keith feels it just as Shiro does, the grip relaxing just enough for a hand to slip free.

He moves on instinct, places that hand against Shiro’s chest and pushes. But instead of movement it’s light and fire that explodes. It flings Shiro back and Keith drops to the ground, panting and weak. He can barely lift his head to see the vampire feet away, eyes stunned.

“Sh—” Speaking burns “—Shiro?”

The man clutches his chest with laboured breaths, just staring. Slowly, painfully, Keith picks himself up. Takes a step and hesitantly reaches out.

“A-are you...”

Flinching back, Shiro pulls free. “I’m fine.”

He’s not fine. The wince he can’t conceal as he jerks says so.

With no idea what just happen Keith tries again, needing to hold onto something, just to ground himself.

“I said I’m fine.” This time the vampire squares his shoulders, stumbles just a little as he finds his footing, as he starts to flee. “I’ll see you later.”

“Shiro, wait.”

Watching Shiro’s retreating back with a sinking in Keith’s gut, he sees it disappear down the stairs, never once turning back.

“Shit,” he sighs, so very, very tired.

He waits a moment, listening for the crash of the front door, then with one last, weary sigh, heads inside.

His apartment looks the same as ever, just as he left it that morning. Garbage overflowing, fridge still bare. But in the dark it feels empty, cold. Like the space between his ribs and the ache he feels everywhere.

He has a knife that shift forms at just a thought and some sort of magic, electrical power that shoots from his hands. There’s a secret organization that sends hell spawn after him, with motives completely unknown. Another secret organization that sends people to follow him yet claims to be on his side. And a rogue vampire that thinks he’s only good when used for baiting or fucking.

He already mentioned his life was fucked, right?

Heading for the shower, he sloughs off his dirty clothes like he wants to do with his very skin. Inside, he scrubs until he’s red and raw, meticulously cleans the dirt beneath his nails and growls in frustration at the half chub that still hasn’t left him.

It’s almost like Shiro drugged him. Some aphrodisiac that made his body good to go when his mind was anything but. But his stupid hard-on hasn’t gotten the memo that dangerous playtime is over.

It wants relief. It needs it.

His fingers brush against his length, the hiss that escapes unavoidable. Just that light touch swells into full hardness, a charge not unlike the one that ran from his hand shooting to his gut. He wraps that hand—which may not be the best idea—around his cock and pumps in slow, languid strokes. This is going to be over embarrassingly quick.

Groaning when he picks up the pace, he doesn’t even stop the image of Shiro from entering his mind—it’s his fault Keith’s like this anyway. He imagines white hair contrasting against dark eyes that always drink him in. Inhumanly hot breath against his skin, panting just as Keith does now.

He does want it. God help him, he wants it again so badly.

Wants to feel that firm torso against his back, powerful arms holding him down. He wonders what Shiro would say to him. Would he talk dirty given the chance? Tell Keith to be a good boy and squirm on his massive cock. Give it to him rough like he wants if he begs. Make him cry while splitting him open.

He has to brace an arm against the wall, forehead against cool tile just to last draw it out. He wants Shiro to own him. Wants to give himself over and feel lips latch onto his throat as come paints their clenched abs. He’s almost there, the wet slide of his hand echoing in the tiny shower, heavy breaths dropping desperate. He feels the teeth Shiro dragged across his neck moments before and comes with shocking intensity.

“Shh—” he gasps and abruptly cuts off. Tells himself he was about to swear and not drop the vampire’s name despite never being a very good liar.

It’s with a lot of shame that he rinses off and leaves the bathroom. Foregoes any sort of dinner and crawls straight into bed, wet hair and all. As he burrows under the blankets, he doesn’t worry about what tomorrow will bring. His orgasm wiping any capacity to fret clean away.

But he does drift to the image of dark curls of smoke. Twisting and wrapping themselves around him as they had when Shiro held him close as they travelled. Somehow, he finds that thought comforting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it took so long to get this chapter out!


	4. Deadcrush

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alt-J - [Deadcrush](https://youtu.be/GOJUNJ1o394)
> 
> I’m really sorry there’s been so much time between updates. When I first started this fic I wanted to push myself outside of my comfort zone and now I’m finding that it’s really, really hard! So I’m not gonna make any promises that updates will happen faster but I absolutely promise that I will finish this story!!
> 
> Special thanks goes to [cosmogonists](https://twitter.com/cosmogonists) for doing this [amazing fan art](https://twitter.com/cosmogonists/status/1124960425383165952?s=21) that helped kick my butt into gear. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!
> 
> I hope this chapter was worth that wait

In the dark interior of an armoured car, a man sits behind the wheel. The fingers of his bionic arm clenched hard enough to leave divots beneath soft leather. He stares, unblinking, through tinted windows at the low-level apartment block. Waiting.

He’s not seen the target since last night. The whelp still safe within its walls. For now. But he knows, with certainty that he won’t lose him a second time.

Why the empress needs him, he’s not been told but her wrath when he’d slipped away had been unspeakable. The parts of him they’d had to replace proof of her vengeance. It does not matter; they are bits he would gladly give for the glory of Galra.

The door of the building opens, messy black hair spilling from a hood that tries to hide the wearer within but it’s no match for his cybernetic eye. He zooms, sees the flash of a sharp chin and purple eyes, and grins for the first time in months.

He’s got him.

After he eliminates the vampiric shadow, he’ll be unprotected.

And then, the boy will be theirs.

･･ ☾･･

Keith boards the bus with trepidation. His bottom lip red and swollen from worrying between teeth. Both legs bouncing against the floor. He’s not sure if he’s welcome at the scrapyard anymore.

After last night he’d be surprised if he was welcome anywhere.

What was once a silent haven, now feels more like a gallows. Or at least a ravaged battlefield with buried mines still lying in wait. But a paycheck’s a paycheck and his classes won’t pay for themselves.

He hasn’t heard from any of the blades and though he didn’t really expect it, it would’ve been nice. A full night’s sleep hadn’t been enough to stop the turbulence from attacking almost the minute he’d opened his eyes.

However, these days that seems to be the norm.

The gates are unlocked when he gets to the yard but inside it’s deserted. There are no heads poking in piles, no one offering unsalvageable parts to the incinerator, even the lights of the trailer are off. In the distance, Keith sees a thin trail of smoke rise from Kolivan’s chimney and hopes that’s a good sign.

Body aching with each step, he groans towards the trailer. Once, in Physiology, he’d learned muscle strength peaks around age thirty but he must be an early bloomer because now it definitely feels like that peak has passed.

When he flicks the light, he doesn’t notice the quiet figure at the table until he’s sitting at the other end. He jumps to see Thace, palms up and eyes closed. Peaceful, meditative.

Quickly, Keith ties his boots, moving as soundless as he can when Thace looks up with a tentative smile.

“Hi.”

“Oh, uh…” The warmth in Thace’s expression catches him off guard, a stark contrast to look of horror when he’d disappeared with Shiro, “...hi.”

Stashing his bag, Keith feels eyes prickling along his spine. He hangs his head between sharp collarbones in an attempt to look as small as he feels.

“Is everything alright?”

Rather dumbly, Keith stares, unsure he’s heard right but nods just the same.

Thace searches him, taking a careful catalogue of every inch as though he didn’t expect it all to still be there. Valid, Keith supposes.

Once satisfied, Thace smiles for real. Clear in relief. “Good. I’m glad you’re okay.”

And wait, he’s...glad? For _Keith??_ “Ummm, how’s Regris?”

Thace’s smile drops but the warmth remains, even through the dark circles that shadow his eyes. “He’s going to be fine, just needs a bit of time to recover.”

“That’s…” Great? Cool? Anything Keith wants to say feels inadequate—the rush of relief mixed with guilt—so he leaves it unfinished. Tries to quirk his lips but fails.

From the messy hair, and still in the clothes he’d last worn, Keith can tell it’s been a long night for Thace. The dimness of the trailer making sense, so Keith nods again, hoping to escape and leave him in peace. But just as he turns, he feels a hand against his shoulder. Thace so quiet he hadn’t heard him move.

“Keith, I wanted to say that I’m sorry.”

He whips around. No way to respond past the stunned silence and parted lips.

“The past few days have been a lot and I just want you to know that I’m here, if you ever need to talk or—you’re not alone in this. Not anymore.”

Sincerity clinging to every word, Thace’s fingers squeeze. The brown of his hazel eyes looking golden in the mid morning haze. Like all blades, Thace stands at least a foot taller, his ridiculous goatee at eye level when Keith cranes his neck. Yet somehow, he makes it work.

“Thanks, I’ll…” Keith licks his lips, averting his stare when Thace catches him, “...keep that in mind.”

If Thace is disappointed he doesn’t let on. Just pats his shoulder before releasing, hands tucking into the pockets of his jeans. Keith tries to imagine him in the armour Regris had worn and thinks he’d probably look right at home.

He’s about to leave, should definitely leave and deal with his shit by himself but maybe…

…maybe Keith is sick of doing it alone. Maybe he’s tired of pushing away the only people who’ve ever offered him help.

“There’s actually something...”

“Yeah?”

Keith chews his lip. “This might sound stupid but...do blades have, like, abilities?”

“Abilities?”

“Just, the other day—how did you knock me out? It felt...different. Almost like being electrocuted.”

He’s braced for shifting eyes, an awkward silence followed by non committal mutters but Thace does none of those. Instead there’s a smirk that bares the flash of canines when he replies, “You felt that did you?”

Another nod.

Leaning back, Thace looks at Keith in new light, eyes shining. “Some of us have an extra gift. An...energy, beneath our skin. I can see how it’d feel like electricity.”

“Only some?”

The look turns more calculating when Thace cocks his head. “Why do you ask?”

And this is where Keith should evade. A simple, “just curious,” and he knows Thace wouldn’t push, but instead Keith does the pushing. Loosens the joints of his self armour a fraction of an inch and hopes.

“I think...I might have it too.”

Thace does not look surprised. There’s a solemn cast to his brow but it’s not incredulous, if anything he seems pleased. “Have you ever heard of Queen Marmora?”

Keith gives a deadpan glare and Thace snorts, ushering him to sit at the table as though he’s in for the long haul.

“In the beginning,” Thace starts once he’s settled, “the world was much different. We lived in the open—all creatures did—ruled by Queen Marmora. She was powerful and gifted, worshipped like a god, but like most in power, she had many enemies. So, she created an army made in her likeness. The story goes that she fell in love with one them, her most faithful guard.”

When he was little, Keith’s dad never told him bedtime stories, but if he did, they’d probably sound just like this. A children’s tale imagined. Thace continues like the story he tells isn’t fantastical.

“Their children became generals, expanding the Blade of Marmora and it’s protection to all races and mixing her lineage. Humans became the Queen’s favourite, fragile and weaker than the rest, in need of protection. The Blade carried her mission with pride and we lived in peace for thousands of years but could not stop the rate at which humans grew and consumed. When they outnumbered all others, they turned on us, called those with supernatural powers monsters and drove us underground. The Blade continued to fight on their behalf but so many were lost, enough now that the Queen’s legacy is all but forgotten, except for the few.”

Absently, Thace has been tracing his fingers. Keith first noticed when they sat. How calloused pads dragged across the plastic tabletop in simple patterns. He’d been too engrossed in Thace’s story to see them flip but now, with the backs of his hands propped, they clench into fists. A fine trembling shaking each digit as his story draws closed. Keith watches as the air around them bends, waving unnaturally until mutating in translucent blue flames. Each tight ball engulfed and beginning to melt the surface below.

Without thinking, without hesitation Keith reaches out. Pulled by something he can’t explain, just a need to touch. The heat warms but doesn’t burn. No pain felt as the tips of his fingers spark on contact. Watching as fire spreads across his own hand, flames licking against his wrist but kept at bay. He doesn’t know how, but he knows it’s his will that stops it from rising.

“Blades with this power,” Thace whispers, their shared inferno reflected in his shining eyes, “are thought to be direct descendants of the Queen.”

Keith swallows hard at the implication. “My mother?”

“Yes, she had this gift. Our fathers taught us how to control it together...they were brothers after all.”

Keith’s eyes go wide and he falls from Thace, so quick that he tumbles from his seat as the flames snuff out.

“Y-you…” Keith sputters, words too difficult to breathe past the cramped, choking of his throat.

“I should have told you sooner.”

Shaking his head, Keith turns to the door, then back. Then paces some more as his steps take the same hurried pace of his mind. He’s known Thace for months, almost a year at this point, and in all that time he never would’ve—

“So, you’re, like...my uncle?”

“Cousin, actually.” Thace frowns, tracking the jerky line Keith wears through the floor. “It’s a lot, I know.”

“You know,” Keith scoffs.

“With everything that’s happened, I thought it might help to know there’s someone truly in your corner.”

That makes Keith pause, mid stride, mid step. Eyes narrowing as they dart to Thace, completely unassuming except for crossed brows from where he’d been following Keith’s movements. He doesn’t look to be exaggerating. Something about the genial slope of his shoulders that lie relaxed and the hand previously lit like a bonfire resting on the table, doesn’t feel forced or rehearsed. Despite himself, Keith’s wound muscles relax.

“Just cause we’re family doesn’t mean you owe me,” he mumbles. Fighting against a strange, spreading warmth in his chest.

Thace hums and stands, grabbing a tool belt and readying himself for work. He comes behind to where Keith’s still seated, laying a hand across his back. “I know, but maybe I want to.”

Keith eyes him again, for once the need to shrug out of someone’s touch absent. Laugh lines trace the edges of Thace’s mouth and across his forehead, weathered but soft. He drops his gaze to where Keith’s hands fold in his lap, pricking with awareness and specks of light that might be imagined skimming the surface.

“I could help you; you know.” Thace nods towards the heat that is definitely starting to sweat Keith’s palms. “Teach you how to control it.”

Shiro had called him not human, but a Blade. One of them. And maybe Keith’s not what he thought he was, but he’d managed to stop a powerful vampire in full force with his hands alone. To ignore something like that could be suicide.

It’s easier than it should be. Keith’s lips curling, just a little, on their own. “Yeah,” he says. Quiet, hushed. “I think I’d like that.”

･･ ☾･･

Work passes without incident. As far as Keith could tell there’d been no one in the yard, save for Thace and himself. The man had kept close to Keith, always less than two piles away. Though he’d wanted to be mad about it he couldn’t quite get there. Flashes of Thace over a broken refrigerator allowing Keith to observe without being seen.

There’d been exactly one picture of his mother in the house he’d spent his first ten years. Standing beside his father with a bundle of blankets—presumably a baby Keith inside—in front their desert home. While his dad had been beaming, her smile had been small, private. This gleam to her eyes that conveyed her joy more than any expression ever could.

Keith sees that same look in Thace’s, from the glances he casts when he thinks Keith’s not paying attention. As though being near Keith with everything out in the open was all he’d been waiting for.

It’d been infectious. Keith only rolling his eyes when Thace asked him to be careful while saying goodbye.

“I mean it, Keith. That vampire of yours—”

“He’s not _my_ vampire.” Keith had been quick to correct but the shrewd stare Thace gave made him pause.

“Regardless, he’s...dangerous.”

 _No shit,_ had felt like an inappropriate response but biting his tongue was a near thing.

In the end Thace had let him go with nothing more than a light punch to his arm. The late afternoon sun beginning its descent over a small house whose chimney still burned in the distance.

Now, with a streaked sky of clouds flaming a brilliant red as he shuffles through the grocery store between work and home, it’s finally meeting the earth. An orange, coral glow highlights the upper shelves and elongates his shadow down mostly deserted aisles. Faded pop songs play through the speakers, their tinny beats a strangely mollifying soundtrack. Calming in their mediocrity. In the packaged food aisle, he finds himself stuck between ramen and cup of soup, wondering why he bothers to check for nutritional facts when it’s the cheaper option he’ll always choose.

By the time he’s paid and bagged his meager groceries the sky is twinkling purple. Sun fully set, but remnant rays clinging to gaseous molecules. It’s pretty like this, stuck somewhere between day and night. Dark but not enough to hide the things that want to stay hidden. Like the man currently scowling in Keith’s direction from the end of the parking lot and causing Keith’s pulse to jump in surprise. Though as he marches towards him in deafening claps of his boots, Keith doesn’t think its subtlety he’s aiming for tonight.

“What’re you doing here?” Keith asks. “It’s still light.”

Shiro stalks to his side, sneering as he grabs Keith’s arm, “Hardly. Come.” He pulls Keith bodily, more of a drag to the street and Keith stumbles to keep up.

“Hey! Get off!” He shoves at Shiro, ignoring the prick of nails through his sweatshirt. “Where are we even going?”

When Shiro ignores him, instead tugging harder, Keith digs in his heels. The playful Shiro that’d joked with him last night before everything went to shit may be gone, but this surly Shiro doesn’t scare Keith like he used to. “Stop it!”

He rips his arm free, stinging skin left in the scrape of claws but it’s barely felt when the murderous glare Shiro pins rings his eyes in gold.

“This isn’t a game. The Galra are close and you’re wasting my time.”

Sick of his belittling tone and all the times Shiro uses it against him, Keith snaps. “Well maybe, if you ever bothered to tell me shit I might actually _want_ to help.”

Shiro growls. Deep and threatening as smoke flares from his shoulders to twist violently. The movements are aimless, frustrated and Keith feels their kinship. Gnashing his teeth to give Shiro a glare of his own. He’s not backing down this time.

“No?” the vampire mocks. “What are you going to do? Tickle me again with that little trick of yours?”

Sparks fly between Keith’s fingers. “It was more than that and you know it.”

“Please. Nothing you do will ever compare to a Druid.”

It’s more of a throwaway line. Something Shiro doesn’t even seem to be aware of saying, but just like that, Keith’s fire smothers. Lost in the sudden seizing of his throat. The memory of Shiro wild and shrieking, _‘I’ll kill you,’_ half mad at the Druid from Kolivan’s.

“What did they do to you?” he can’t stop himself from asking.

The dark clouds wrap around Shiro like a cloak. A black embrace that temporarily shields him from view until they absorb into his thick torso. When they do, Shiro’s face is hard and impassive, jaw rolling. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Shiro—”

“I have a hunch,” he says, apropos of nothing. Leaving Keith’s head to spin with the change. “Have you ever heard of quint?”

He hasn’t, mumbling as much to Shiro.

“It’s a drug that’s been making its way through the club scene. Its effects are said to be...wild.” From the way Shiro says it, Keith’s not sure what he means, but the emphasis implies that he should. “I think the Galra are pushing it. Remember when Haxus said there was a deal coming? I think he meant quint.”

“But…” there's a connection Keith’s missing, “why here?”

When’d he fought for the Galra it’d been halfway across country, part of the appeal as to why he’d settled so far away. At the time, he’d thought the distance would be enough. Clearly, he’d been wrong.

“Expansion?” Shiro shrugs, “Distribution? The Galra have always been ambitious. There’s more to it than quint, we just need to find out what.”

“We?”

The tightening of Shiro’s shoulders is almost imperceptible. As is the extra clench of muscle below his ear. A sick part of Keith thrills to know he can spot these tells.

“Enough talking, lets go.” Black tendrils reach as Shiro does, hand once again clawing Keith’s arm and smoke blinding.

The scent of nutmeg burns his nostrils when he’s engulfed and frantically he splutters, “What about my food?”

Shiro snarls in his ear, hard body closer than it probably needs to be. “Forget them.”

“Fuck that,” he tries, “I paid for these.”

The growl that rumbles through his chest shouldn’t be that hot. Shouldn’t shake down to his knees and ignite where they’re pressed together, but there it is. The smoke swirling quicker, rising, and then they’re displaced. Rushing through air and folding time and he gets the briefest glance of his front door, bags ripped from his hand and they’re off again. It’s so quick and disorienting that when they finally stop, he can’t catch a breath.

He keels over, hands to knees. “Shit, that’s…” he gulps.

“A rush?” Shiro finishes. A tiny smirk playing at full lips while he eyes Keith in profile. White hair perfectly in place and square jaw looking strong.

Keith’s poor heart thumps erratically. An inexplicable flush spreading across his cheeks till he has to drop his head and miss the way Shiro’s nostrils flare.

In the silence, Keith finally recognizes their surroundings. A wide, surprisingly clear alley, a heavy black door in front of them.

“Bayard?” he asks, shock palpable.

Shiro doesn’t look at him as he clears his throat, voice almost embarrassed when he says, “I may need you to act as a buffer.”

And then he looks to be stealing himself, knocking on the door and leaving Keith to hiss a scrambled, “What does that mean?” before it swings open.

Romelle’s eyes pop as she takes them in, darting between the two before settling into utter shock. Mouth dropped open, filed black nails gripping tight to the door’s edge.

“May we come in?” asks Shiro in a purr. In a way Keith’s never heard before, rich and deep and seeping like molasses to drown in thick sweetness.

The change of demeanour smacks him. Shiro’s hard edges honed and somehow less threatening. Though it’s aimed at Romelle, Keith feels a squirming clench in his gut.

Romelle, though? She looks absolutely terrified.

“N-no,” she stutters, “Allura said—she won’t—”

Moving closer, Shiro swells, in width more than height. His broad shoulders seeming to swallow her whole. “It’s important though.” He leans towards her ear. A sudden drop in pressure the only warning when air swoops as though Shiro pulls it towards him. “Won’t you let us by?”

The fine trembling of Romelle’s body melts. Her pinched face going slack in favour of acquiescence. It takes a minute for Keith to realize it’s _Shiro,_ eyes intent and solely focused. Shiro, and his overwhelming gaze silently commanding her to listen.

Keith knows what it feels like, was there not twenty-four hours prior but still he’s surprised to see how quick she gives. How her eyes glaze and head bows. She stands aside, slender arm outstretched in invitation.

Shiro’s grin is sharp and wicked as he coos his approval. Leaving Romelle an empty shell of herself at the open door. Some of its effects tingling Keith’s way as he follows without question, close to Shiro who leads them through the lower bar.

It’s quiet tonight, mid week always their hardest sell. The dancers are gone in favour of strobing lights and smoke machines carefully placed to give a false sense of privacy. Through the haze, Keith spots the bouncers at their posts. Most of them tracking the two newcomers rather than their usual party goers. One’s even speaking into his comm which can only spell trouble.

Keith knows the rooms upstairs are closed, only patrons with deep pockets and dark proclivities privy to their access, but Shiro walks the stairs as though he owns the place. Pushing through the upper doors with ease, yet Keith’s certain they should have been locked. Splintered wood and a half-ruined door when he passes through proving it.

All that bravado dies though, the second a furious Allura comes storming from the hall that leads to her office. Her untied hair long and steaming down her back, soft curls floating behind and hands clenched in fists like the twist of her scowl. “Takashi Shirogane,” she roars, “how dare you show your face here again!”

Perhaps most shocking of all is the way Shiro actually steps behind Keith. It’s subtle, but for the way he shifts to fall slightly back. As is the way he fiercely whispers, “do something,” before pushing Keith forward.

But Allura doesn’t even notice him, eyes laser focused and burning holes through Shiro’s flesh that Keith swears he can smell. He can’t do anything but gape at the rage that lights her entire aura like she’s larger than life. Ready to consume it.

She passes right by him, grabbing Shiro by the jacket to throw him into the nearest wall. A feat that would require strength beyond Keith’s understanding but she makes it look effortless. She pushes against the snarling vampire and isn’t phased in the slightest when fangs descend and he snaps at her.

“Allura!” Keith tries, but he’s ignored.

“I give you Keith for one night.” She raises a finger, “ _One._  Then I know I made myself perfectly clear after you butchered that man that you were leave here. But instead you sneak into my club, thrall one of my employees, and have Keith again under this very roof as though I wouldn’t find out.”

“I—” Shiro starts but she wraps fine fingers around his throat and lifts. Somehow managing to raise the brick of a man to his toes and cut off whatever he’d wanted to say.

“No, you’ve gone too far this time. My people are _not_ for you to toy with.”

Somewhere in the commotion Coran’s come over. Silent and making Keith jump when a hand grabs his arm as he tries to intervene. Keith begins to protest but then Allura does something so far from everything her body language screams that he stops dead. Stupefied.

She pushes up, toes flexing and heels leaving the floor and kisses Shiro. Hard.

Slams their mouths together despite those chilling teeth and devours him whole. There’s clawing and snarling and probably tongue and Keith’s entire body goes rigid in shock. He doesn’t know whether to be angry or turned on, but it’s definitely a sight to behold.

Until Keith notices the way Shiro’s suddenly extended talons spasm. How his body jerks and his cheeks hollow and dark lines spread across his face like cracking ice. Allura glows in the low upstairs lighting, not just a reflection off her silver hair but her entire outline. Brown skin shining as Shiro’s turns ashen.

By the time Keith realizes she’s hurting him, she’s already let go. Shiro falling to his knees and spluttering. An unnerving sight to see someone so dominate quaking at the feet of another, even if that other is someone as formidable as—

“Allura?” Keith croaks. Fear and a good amount of awe mixed in.

When she looks at him, she’s harrowing. Slitted pupils in bright, fluorescent blue eyes. Black, gaping mouth with lips pulled back. Unnatural. Unhuman. “I will deal with you later. Leave us.”

The last bit is said to Coran, who immediately takes Keith in hand to turn him away but he can’t leave Shiro like this. Still drained and dazed. Still teetering on the ground like he’s about to keel over.

“No,” he protests, trying to resist. “No, I—”

Words die when he sees Coran’s face, the same cat like eyes with black pupils the only colour shining in a terrifying beacon of light and shivers. “Come,” he says. A gentleness that doesn’t match his ghoulish features.

Keith’s head swivels on his shoulders, looking back to see Shiro rising up on shaking legs, clutching painfully at the swell of his chest. The colour’s already returning to his face and Allura reaches out to help him stand. Although she yanks him non too gently, she doesn’t attack again, smooth skin shining just a bit less in the dark.

He meets Shiro’s eyes and sees the tiniest shift of a nod. It’s not reassuring but Keith finally allows himself to be pulled away. Leaving the vampire and Allura to stare each other down in a lobby meant to hold people awaiting their turn in the playrooms. A fleeting memory of Allura tying him to a St. Andrew’s Cross flits to mind, only now with Shiro in his place and he shivers anew.

Coran’s eyebrows raise but he doesn’t say anything. Releasing Keith when they turn the corner and sliding into his own little haven behind the bar. It’s not lit up like last time, instead the sleek countertop pristine and spotless but Coran still wipes a rag over it before placing a drink in front Keith. His eyes have gone back normal and he looks the same as always but Keith narrows his own.

“What are you?”

For all that he should’ve seen it coming, Coran’s mustache still twitches and his lips purse. Shiftily, he scratches at his neck, other hand still diligently scrubbing at the bar to avoid Keith’s eyes. “I’m afraid I don’t know you’re talking about.”

“Look.” And Keith is just done. “In the past month I’ve seen some serious shit and watching your eyes light up like a fucking jack o'lantern barely makes the list.” He grips hard around the glass tumbler and throws back the bourbon within. “I’ve been stalked by a vampire, had literal monsters sent after me by some shady underground gang and now a bunch of supposed superhero soldiers with magical knives want me to join them, so I’d really appreciate it if you could cut the crap.”

In front of him, Coran’s jaw has slowly started to drop. Bug eyed and clearly trying to parse it all when his forehead wrinkles and faintly he replies, “Wait, you’re a Blade of Marmora?”

It pains Keith how obtuse Coran can be. Insides on fire and flames licking at the base of his skull, Keith pounds his glass on the bar top. “Coran!”

The man jumps. “Okay, okay. No need to get all...” he waves his hand dramatically.

Keith growls.

“Technically, Allura and I are demons but we're not malevolent, quite the opposite actually. You see we thrive off of certain...energies.” Coran’s face goes a little red, “It’s in our nature to give pleasure of the...sexual kind.”

Eyes going wide, Keith wishes he had another drink to slam. “So...when Allura kissed Shiro just now...?”

“Well,” he hedges, “that’s a bit of an extreme example, there’s a history there and Allura was just taking Shiro down a notch. But yes, I guess you could say she was drawing from his life-force—or rather, undead-force,” he finishes with a wink.

Poorly timed jokes have always been Coran’s thing but now Keith wants to punch him. Envisions just walking out and never returning. However, the reminder that Coran’s essentially still the same man is sorely needed. Despite being yet another person in Keith’s life keeping secrets, he’s always been kind and patient. Always been helpful. Whether tending bar, or setting up rooms, or…Keith gasps.

“All those times Allura and I—was she _feeding_ on me!?”

“You weren’t being drained, if that’s what you mean. For Incubi it’s more like a sharing of power. The stronger the, ah, pleasure, the more energy we receive, so really it was in her best interest to make you feel as good as possible.”

Keith doesn’t even know how to respond. Can’t even begin to break down all the times he was turned to putty in Allura’s leather clad hands. All the times every participant here must have fed right into Coran and Allura’s palms. The thought makes him snort, then shake. Mirth suddenly wracking his shoulders with deep silent spasms. Breath caught in his throat with bubbling laughter that’s just this short of stable.

“Fuck,” he wheezes between gasps, “sex demons...running...a fucking...sex club.”

A high peeling sound seizes his body. Uncontrollable tears leaking past scrunched eyes, and a painfully twisted face. Coran suffers in silence, casting furtive glances around the bar then knocking his own glass back. Scrambling for breath, Keith wipes at his eyes. Well aware of the scene he’s making but at this point, laughing is all he can do. He tries to take a breath, giggles and splutters and fights the manic curl of his lips. “Is anyone _actually_ human?” he huffs to himself.

Thankfully Coran sees his fit for what it is. Refilling both their drinks and waiting for Keith to gain some semblance of control before answering. “Humans still outnumber the supernatural by a staggering amount, but usually we tend to flock together.” He eyes Keith with renewed interest. “On your part I guess it was subconscious.”

“You think?” Keith snorts.

Escaping hiccups mostly tamped down, Keith leans his elbows on the bar with a sigh. Cupping his head and running a hand through tangled hair. Movement catches his eye from back where they came. A flicker of shadows against the wall.

“Shiro’s okay, right? Allura looked pissed.”

He doesn’t like the way Coran smirks. “I’m sure he’s fine.”

Keith bites his lip. Gnawing on the mound while an ugly feeling plants it’s roots. “You don’t think they’re…?” He can’t even finish it.

This time, Coran loses the smirk. Instead regarding Keith with scrunched brows and a frown while he studies him. Letting the question die and instead asking in a quiet voice “Keith, are you in trouble?”

Dropping his hands, Keith groans, fingers splayed against the counter to trace watermarks left from Coran’s towel. Tiny circles rimmed in white leaving streaks against the lacquer.

“You said there’s a gang that’s after you?”

Keith sighs. “Remember when I asked for a job and you guys wanted to know if I had any experience working security?” Coran nods. “I told you I did but that was a lie.”

Searching Coran’s face for outrage, he finds non, and so continues.

“I used to fight, like for money. This guy saw me beat up some street kids and offered me a chance to fight in their underground ring. All I had to do was keep my head down and earn, and the money was good so I figured why not.” It all seemed so simple. Eighteen and on his own. Tired of living on the street and struggling just to find a safe place to sleep. The Galra had given him a chance to make it. Saving his money and leaving the first chance he got. “I did it for a few years. Made a name for myself and stayed away from the drugs they were pushing. I guess they weren’t too happy about me leaving.”

Guessing where this is heading, Coran’s lips are turned and firmly pressed. “So, they followed you here?”

“Yeah. Not sure where I’d be right now if Shiro hadn’t of been there.”

The whole time, he’s been keeping his ears pricked for yelling. Much more concerned for Shiro’s well being than he should be. Coran seems to be looking in that direction as well, troubled face clouded. Keith wonders if he can hear them, or maybe sense what’s going on.

“This gang…” Coran starts, “...who are they?”

Keith’s already expecting Coran’s reaction when he tells him it’s the Galra.

“Lucifer’s balls! The Galra?!”

But it’s still kind of funny to see how Coran jumps with it. Hair even standing on end and frizzing like a cartoon character. At least until Coran starts shaking his head and muttering in a way that has Keith’s own hair rising. Heart rate spiking with the horror radiating from his former colleague. “No, no, no. It can’t be, there was nothing left. Zarkon was killed.”

By my mother, Keith thinks, but can’t bring himself to say. Chest constricting with the thought.

“We searched everywhere. Allura and I promised Shiro…” He’s pacing down the bar. Words only fleetingly making their way to Keith as Coran thinks it through.

Cautiously, Keith ventures to ask the question that’s been bugging him most. “Shiro sure has it out for them...”

“Yes, well murdering one’s mate will do that to a person,” Coran blurts out, unaware he’s spilled anything worth noting until Keith jerks so violently it must show in the corner of Coran’s vision.

“What?” Keith asks, aghast.

Coran stops in his track, whipping around like lightning with a rapidly paling face as he sees the shock on Keith’s own. “Oh,” he says faintly, “did Shiro not tell you?”

The silence between them is terrible.

“Tell me what?”

Looking for the first time like he’s true and surely cornered, Coran hasn’t moved but for the frantic darting of his eyes. Seeking an answer he won’t find in the textured walls of Bayard’s upper bar. But he’s saved from having to say anything at all when Shiro comes, rounding the corner with smoke and shadows lashing.

“We’re done here,” he says, walking to Keith with the familiar determination. Halting only to grab the biceps that strain beneath his grip.

Keith watches his face closely. Notes the lines that are furrowed deeply. The displeasure that flows from Shiro in powerful heats. He rises without question. An obedience in the action that he hates himself for, but is powerless to stop.

Luckily Allura is there to forestall. “I wish to speak with Keith before you go.”

The vampire’s glowing eyes say what he thinks of her request but they all know it’s more than that, Allura not one to be trifled with in her own club. More of a home, really, with the way she talked of Keith when they first arrived.

 _My people,_ she’d called him, and he flushes at the tenderness he felt with the statement.

She leads him back to her office. No pleasantries or fifty-year-old scotch to be had, just Allura’s sincere and worried expression locking him in place.

“Keith, what are you doing?”

She’s bolder than the blades in her warnings. _“He’s only using you,” “He doesn’t care about anything,” “There’s no saving him.”_

“I’d tell you to think this through if I thought you’d listen,” she says, remorse in every syllable.

Keith hedges, “What do you think is happening?”

Instead of a reply she levels him a look, unswayed but not unsympathetic. When she dismisses him, she hugs him first. Tight and possessive and he hears the, _watch your back,_ as if spoken aloud.

He asks to walk home when Shiro grabs at him again, needing space and some room to breathe more than he can articulate. He doesn’t expect Shiro to walk quietly beside him, but he does, lost in thoughts as deep as Keith’s own.

“Are you going to tell me what that was about?” Keith asks at length when his building comes into view.

But like he expected, Shiro stays quiet. Head bent and looking solemn in what little light illuminates their path. Cold concrete and persistent shadows beginning to feel like their constant companions.

It’s not until they near the entrance that Shiro speaks. “Allura’s going to help us. Quint has been running rampant at Bayard and she wants it taken care of.”

Keith watches the way Shiro’s face obscures. Sometimes, it’s easy to mistake him for human. When he’s calm and collected, he simply looks tired. Grey, black eyes easily dismissed. Paler than normal skin a trick of the light. What would he look like under the sun? Keith wonders.

“The next time a dealer comes around, they’ll call me.”

“And then?”

Shiro leaves the question unanswered, knowing Keith’s not sure he really wants one anyway. Awkwardly he stands by the door, shifting just the slightest bit forward when Shiro continues to stares at him, endlessly lured. But then Shiro steps back, throat sliding, before he disappears in a sudden puff of burning smoke.

Keith tries not to dwell on his disappointment.

･･ ☾･･

He doesn’t see Shiro for days after that. Doesn’t even feel him in the blackened nights when travelling to and from class. It’s for the best, Keith falling in to something that resembles the normal he used to know. The scrapyard during the day, his studies at night. And if it feels a little empty, he won’t admit it.

Except now he’s added training with Thace in the quiet times when work is slow. He starts small, helping Keith manipulate the way his energy flows. Teaching him how to find where it lies and harness it at a thought. Or, at least he attempts to.

Keith’s always prided himself on the talent of adapting quick. Owing much of the success he’s had while on his own to it. But this is something else. How the fuck is he supposed to control a magical force that, until recently, he hadn’t even known was lurking inside his body?

Except Thace is forgiving and patient. Assuring Keith that all it will take is time. “It took your mother almost seventy years to really master it.”

“Excuse me?!”

Learning that the Blades were maybe just a little bit immortal is a curve all its own. If their profession wasn’t one of constant danger, they might’ve known for sure but unfortunately the mortality rate for a Blade of Marmora is devastatingly high.

“Even Queen Marmora and her King were eventually slaughtered in their sleep.”

Though he can’t get Thace to fess up to his age, the man seems to take particular glee in revealing Kolivan to be almost two hundred and fifty. One day, as they work the yard, he quietly tells Keith his mother had been a hundred and ten when she’d passed away.

“What was she like?” Keith whispers when he finally finds the courage.

They’re taking a break out amongst the rubble. Keith perched on the hood of a smashed golf cart while Thace sits in the cabin. He’d been demonstrating how to blow the cap off a beer bottle just using his power. Sweaty marks leaving trails in the gathered condensation.

Thace settles back. “She was kind and courageous, always looking for the good in others.” He smiles and shakes his head. “But also, infuriatingly headstrong, much like you. She would’ve learned to control her fire sooner if she’d stopped blaming herself and simply learned some patience.”

Keith hears the instruction loud and clear but can’t help but feel inadequate as he struggles to even budge the metal fixed upon his bottle. Seventy years is starting to look good.

“Do you—” Keith licks his lips. “Do you think I’ll live as long as a blade?”

Swallowing, Thace squints against the sun, taking his time to formulate an answer. “I don’t know. I’m not sure there’s ever been a pairing between Blade and human. They tend not to understand us.”

And that’s a thought that plagues Keith when he makes it home. Heating his TV dinner and watching a show just to fill his apartment with something other than his stale breath. He’s dosing on the couch, an afternoon of heat sapping his strength when a powerful crash threatens his front door.

Frantic pounding shakes the walls and it’s not until a familiar voice shouts, “Keith! Are you there?” torn and desperate, that he opens it.

But Shiro slams into an invisible wall at the threshold, a macabre version of himself with twisted face and hideous marring’s. “Let me in, now!” he commands.

“Yeah,” Keith mumbles, too startled not to listen. Heart in his throat at the picture before him. Shaken further when Shiro all but tackles him into the room, body large and shadows larger swallowing him up.

Unable to breathe, Keith pushes back, face coming away hot and sticky from a cut so wide across Shiro’s chest he can see the ruined flesh between shreds of fabric. And it’s not just the one, blood dripping from Shiro like a sieve in far too many to count.

Overwrought and violent, Shiro checks Keith over. Clawed hands digging as he grabs what he inspects. It’s ludicrous, given the fact that it’s _Shiro_ who looks like he’s been flung through a meat grinder. If his clothes weren’t black, Keith’s sure they’d be soaked to their fibres in crimson. Shiro’s more tears and open wounds than man.

“Have they come?” Shiro asks, painfully gripping Keith’s chin.

Keith’s eyes are wide. “Who?”

At that, Shiro whips through Keith’s apartment faster than blinking. Searching rooms and locking doors, windows, his nostrils flared and eyes glowing brightly. At the kitchen window he glares, lowering the blinds and finally pausing long enough for Keith to ask, “What happened to you?”

His hair’s a disaster. There might even be a chunk missing from one of his sides but the fall over his eyes makes him look twice as lethal when he says, “He’s here.” And then... “Sendak.”

 _Sendak_ , the man Keith’s handlers would threaten him with if they thought he was stepping out of line. The man that, after so long with no encounter, Keith assumed was more of a Galra legend than general. Until he’d shown up on the last night Keith fought for the Galra, the night he’d beaten Myzak. Huge and predatory, they hadn’t even spoken but Keith knew the unspoken danger. Could see he wasn’t someone he wanted to encounter in the back of an alley.

Keith sucks in a breath. Reaching out in a half formed thought to staunch the flow of a deep cut still oozing from Shiro’s arm. “You’re hurt,” he says when the vampire flinches back.

“It’s fine. They’ll heal soon enough.”

“At least let me help.” Then he grabs just below the cut, pulling Shiro over to the kitchen table.

Shiro resists, of course he does, all high keyed and strung out. Not so much shaking but the wild, frenzied way he twitches is enough to put anyone on edge. Keith could never force him to do anything but when they lock eyes and Keith pleads with his thoughts to _sit_ , the man finally goes.

When settled, Keith retrieves his first aid kit from the hall.

For someone so large and fearsome, the hiss that leaves Shiro’s mouth as Keith applies antiseptic seems ridiculous. Keith presses his lips together, only now getting close enough to really see the gruesome injuries. He lifts his eyes and finds backlit ones watching him work through clenched teeth.

“You don’t have to—”

Keith cuts him off. “You’re bleeding all over my floor.”

And it’s literally everywhere. Keith has to start with just the basics of wiping him down before he can really begin. But even as Keith cleans, he can see the wounds start stitching themselves together. A slow closing that’s incredible to witness. The reopened gash across Shiro’s nose practically healed by the time he gets to it, Keith only wiping at the dried blood peeling from soft, pinkish skin.

There’re bits of clothing mixed within the gashes of Shiro’s torso, flesh and fabric close to becoming one. Grabbing the hem of Shiro’s shirt Keith starts to lift, blood and dirt still not enough to hide the swell of perfectly ridged muscle, each cell a beautiful square of abdominals. Gently Keith wipes his cloth over them, sort of to clean but more just to sate his compulsion to touch.

Shiro suddenly grabs his wrist. “I can do that,” he says, deep voice gruffer than before, eyes glossy. A flickering light that drops to the lip Keith’s holds between his teeth. “Could you...” Shiro clears his throat, “get the back?”

Unsure if he can speak without wavering, Keith nods and Shiro turns in his seat. He doesn’t remove his shirt all the way, just rucks it up to his shoulders and waits, and then Keith loses time.

Beneath fresh scars, the back of Shiro looks like macramé more than skin. Knotted wounds of old and new criss-crossing against the surface and mapping out horrors Keith can’t even imagine. Vampires in media are always portrayed as smooth and perfect. Cold marbled skin, hard and unyielding but this is a war zone. He doesn't know why but the sight twinges inside him.

He wants to say something. Maybe ask what happened, maybe say that he’s sorry, but he knows it would be unwelcome. As would the urge he has to simply press his face. The more Keith stares, the more those scarred shoulders start to bunch until Shiro has to look over his shoulder, not meeting his eye when he prods, “Well?”

Detachment is the only way to work. He doesn’t think about his fingers lightly tracing the lines that run down Shiro’s sides. Or how he’s close enough for his breath to fan over marks that must be burning as they heal. Instead he loses himself to the task at hand, gently rinsing Shiro’s wounds free of debris.

In the quiet hush that’s fallen over them, he absently wonders about all the other things mainstream media may have gotten wrong. Are vampires only created by sires? Would it really take a wooden stake to the heart to kill one? If Shiro were to drink his blood, would he heal even faster?

“Yes,” Shiro whispers, rousing Keith from thought. Keith’s mind goes blank in an instant, his hands deathly still. “But I think you’ve done enough.”

Then Shiro rises from his seat. Tattered shirt clutched to his front with rigid claws. Eyes still glowing and breath shallow, he turns and pads to the bathroom without a word. Leaving Keith to stare and wonder if he’s committed some supernatural faux pas. But he’s got enough to worry about, the moodiness of Shiro shouldn’t even make the cut.

That the Galra would send Sendak doesn’t bode well for either of them. Haxus had threatened Keith with it but he never truly believed. He still doesn’t understand why they would even want him, but there’s a lot he doesn’t understand. And now he’s tense and tired and maybe, in the part of his mind he refuses to acknowledge, a little bit scared.

At the window he peeks between the blinds. Nothing to see but a few struggling trees and a lot of bleak landscape, the eerie edge to its stillness enough to have him dropping his hand, pulling the heavy curtains tightly together and proceeding to do so in every room of his apartment. In the bedroom, he thinks about Shiro’s ruined clothes and tries to find some suitable substitutes, dropping the largest shirt and pair of sweats he has outside the bathroom door.

With everything that’s happened, he’s a barely contained mess of jitters by the time Shiro emerges ten minutes later. Jumping at distant noises and holding his breath every time a sound filters through the door. But when Shiro re-enters the kitchen—cut off t-shirt barely covering his midriff and pants that Keith usually drowns in hugging every curve—he forgets himself completely.

“What?” Shiro asks defensively when Keith’s unhinged jaw prevents him from forming words.

It’s the sight of soft, muted green that undoes him. The faded logo of some local sports team obscenely stretched across the pecs of a man that could crush Keith, sending him overboard. He stifles the frothing hysteria that wants to burst but his lips twitch with the effort.

“Sorry,” he says when Shiro scowls, coughing to clear his throat.

Crossing his python arms and testing the limits of that shirt’s stitching, Shiro huffs. If Keith had already thought he looked human the night Shiro walked him home, this is something else.

“Did you, uh, at least find out what the Galra are planning?” he asks to distract himself.

“No,” Shiro answers, dark brow creasing, “I was ambushed.”

Keith honestly can’t imagine anyone getting the drop on Shiro. Can only hope that Sendak looks half as bad as him and then they might actually get some time to think.

Hearing his thoughts, Shiro’s reply is grim. “I may have slowed Sendak down, but he won’t let tonight stop him.”

Keith swallows, looking up from where Shiro stands towering above his spot on the couch. A lamp from the table lighting the frayed ends of his pale hair. The toll of the day weighs heavy on both of them, enough that for awhile they simply stare at the other. A million questions but none either wants to ask.

“You should get some sleep,” Shiro says after a moment, the deep, heavy bags under each eye more pronounced than ever. “I’ll keep watch tonight.”

Keith jerks. “What, here?”

Shiro lifts a brow. “Would you prefer I wait on the porch like a dog?”

“No that’s not—”

“The living room is fine.” It’s said with an air of finality, a dismissive tone.

Keith feels the need to argue, if only on principle, but surprisingly the thought of having Shiro nearby is actually reassuring. Both of them too tired to argue over nothing anyway.

Awkwardly he stands, smoothing down the front of his shirt in a nervous habit. There’s a protocol here, when someone stays over, but he struggles to think of what. “Do you need anything, or...?”

At some point, Shiro had stopped watching him, now looking around the room. At its mostly bare, unlivable space, and the tattered, second hand furniture. Until now, Keith’s never minded its simplicity, but the way Shiro’s gaze cuts as if there might as well be nothing there at all makes him oddly skittish.

“No.”

Shiro goes to pull a blanket off the couch, wincing for a moment when his arm stretches out. Keith, reacting on instinct, starts forward to help but Shiro flashes him a look and straightens quickly. “I’m good.”

He’s still not sure what to do. Continues to stand there a little helplessly until Shiro meets his eyes and there’s something infinitesimally softer in his usually cold steel.

“Thank you, though,” Shiro says quietly, completely throwing Keith for a loop.

So, he turns, jerks his head in some semblance of acknowledgment and flees so fast that he’s in his room with the door slammed shut, and doesn’t even realize he’s done exactly zero of his bedtime routine—which is really just piss and brush his teeth—until it’s too late.

Fuck, whatever. There’s a vampire in his living room that’s not leaving anytime soon. He has a right to be freaked out, okay?

He tries to settle on the bed. Wraps himself nice and tight once he’s stripped of everything but a tank and briefs, and squeezes his eyes. But, try as he might, sleep won’t come. Minutes tracking by with the harsh, uneven fall of his chest. Nothing but the occasional pass of cars from the street below.

It’s a restless hour of tossing and turning and pointedly ignoring any thought that tries to eek through his brain, when he goes the grab some water, only to find his cup bone dry. Debating whether it’s worth it to get up only lasts for so long before he angrily throws back his comforter and stomps towards the kitchen.

Only the sight of Shiro, shirtless and standing by the window arrests him. A shocked, sort of choking sounds leaving his mouth before he can call it back. The man turns his head, looking just as surprised to see Keith as Keith is of him, and for a moment neither moves. Keith’s tongue too dry to make words anyway.

It’s Shiro that breaks the standoff. “Your shirt was too small,” he says almost sheepishly. “I ripped it.”

“Oh—,” Keith utters. Too consumed by the mental image of his shirt being torn apart by a mere flex of Shiro’s muscles to notice how his throat tightens. “—kay.” Another few seconds pass before he finds his strained voice. “I was just...getting water.”

Shiro turns fully to face him, something like, “of course,” being said but it’s barely heard over the crash of Keith’s glass. Because when he turns, it exposes a terrible, garish trauma strewn across Shiro’s chest.

Almost right in the middle, slightly tilted in an oblong shape, Shiro’s skin is missing. Looking like it was melted off with harsh burn marks around the edges and blistered, yellow gore that looks nothing like all the other newly healed wounds on his abdomen. This is something different, something deadly. Shiro places a hand over it as if to hide it from view and that’s when Keith remembers.

“Is that...from me?” From four nights ago when Shiro pushed him up against the door and violated his mind. “You said—” Keith swallows. “You said it was nothing.”

Giving Keith his back, Shiro spins to the window, eyes hard and says, “It is nothing.”

But Keith can’t stop seeing it. A festering missing chunk that’s not coming back. “But it’s not healing.”

The vampire growls. “It will.”

Not in time, Keith thinks. Not in enough time to properly defend against Sendak or the Galra whenever they chose to strike. And then Keith understands how Sendak would’ve managed to get the upper hand on Shiro. “It’s hurting you.”

Shiro says nothing.

“Shiro, we have to do something.”

“Like what?”

“Like…” Keith searches his mind. Drugs probably wouldn’t help, doctors either. He thinks of the Druid that healed Regris and Shiro hisses.

Okay not an option. But then, how else would he—

“Bite me,” Keith breathes.

Shiro’s eyes are round and stunned, his entire face stupefied as he gapes at Keith. “What?”

“Earlier,” Keith licks his lips, heart pounding hard enough he has to push out the words, “you said drinking my blood would help you heal. If I caused that, then this should fix it, right?”

“Keith—”

“So, do it.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I do.”

Both men stare at each other. Keith’s hands balled at his sides to stop their shaking. For someone who recently tried to force this on him, Shiro looks surprisingly hesitant. Searching Keith’s appearance and mind for the lie. Keith feels him rooting there and thinks, _we have to, you said yourself the Galra are coming._

Shiro’s tone is careful, deceptively placid when he asks, “Are you sure?”

Silently, Keith steps towards him, locking eyes with a slow shake of his head, floorboards creaking under his weight. “Just don’t—” he swallows at the black of Shiro’s pupils, already feeling their pull. “—No thrall, okay.”

The nails of Shiro’s hand are lengthening to points as he moves as well. Drawing up until he’s directly in front of Keith and trailing his fingers down the bare of Keith’s arm to wrap them around his delicate wrist.

There’s a hammering in Keith’s throat, the lump so big he can hardly breathe. He watches as Shiro runs a thumb along bluish veins connecting hand to arm, imagines the throbbing of his blood like a visible pulse. When he lifts his eyes it’s to see pearly fangs descending, glistening with saliva that end in wicked looking peaks.

He sees it happening in his mind's eye. Feels Shiro’s breath hot and heavy and rippling over his fine, feathered hairs. Teeth grazing over the beat of his heart and fringe tickling the sensitive underside of skin. Every second breaking down to the moment those razor-sharp teeth cut through him.

Keith gasps. Fingers twitching and eyes dilating. The sharp pain melting as his held breath flutters out in pure, unfiltered exhilaration. His eyes slide closed with a powerful heave that shakes his foundation.

Shiro latches on like a man and his last meal, insatiable in the way his hand clamps down and immobilizes. Long draughts pulling on more than just Keith’s blood. He’s never felt this before. Every nerve alight and buzzing. Thrumming in time with the desire he feels scorching a path through his gut. It’s so much like the night before. Like being under Shiro’s control. Wanting what he wants. Needing what he needs.

With his wrist firmly clutched to Shiro’s eager mouth, he steps even closer, unconsciously rubbing himself against him. Keith whines high in his throat, swooning as his legs start to give but then they’re on the couch and they may have flown but nothing matters except Shiro’s hot devouring. Fangs deep into the meat of him.

Warmth spreads, drugged and swaying and whispering Shiro’s name as though he’s in a trance. Hard and rocking against the vampire whose lap he sits perched in. A craving so heady he tastes it on his tongue.

When Shiro pulls back, it’s disorienting. His wet mouth popping as fangs retract, red stained teeth dripping. Keith blinks, bleary and shaking, his entire body protesting Shiro’s cessation. Pools of blood colouring the corners of Shiro’s mouth that Keith wants nothing more than to lap at with his tongue.

His chest fills painfully, each breath not spent wrapped in Shiro a waste. The need to take him in so strong he might black out.

“I said...” he pants, cock pulsing, “not...to use your thrall.”

Shiro licks a hot stripe over twin punctures on Keith’s wrist and something mournful twists to see them close with barely a trace. Much like the festering wound of Shiro’s chest that’s fully healed except for its satiny new skin.

“I didn’t,” Shiro says, flashing gold eyes peering up at Keith. Hooded and waiting.

Keith leans in, the need to have Shiro every which way so powerful he can’t fight it, would never even dream of it. “ _Shiro._ ”

Their lips fall near, brushing. An invisible line that’s stood between them crumbling the instant they meet in a frantic crash. Keith presses in like his life depends on it, locking his arms around Shiro’s neck. To keep him where Keith would feel the crash of his heart if it still worked, but his own beats hard enough for the both of them.

He pushes in his tongue, tastes the metallic tang and shudders. Shiro’s claws shred his shirt in an instant, falling in ribbons around their waists. Pointy nails dragging down his back to cup his rolling hips that haven’t stopped moving. Already, Keith’s lost control, sensation the only thing he’s chasing. Trapped cock grinding and circling and steering them both to fever a pitch with Shiro’s appreciative groan.

With one fucking huge hand, Shiro lifts him up. The other tugging on his pants and Keith wishes he’d tear those off too, so he does. Torn jeans thrown aside and Keith’s hardness pressing into Shiro’s abdomen as the vampire holds him close and works tight sweatpants down his own thighs.

Lube. They need lube and Keith’s never been so angry about it because it’s all the way across his apartment and in his room and...Shiro hears his cries. Shadows bursting forth to swirl high and when they clear they’re in Keith’s bed with Shiro leaned against the headboard and a slicked finger already nudging in.

“Hnn,” Keith sighs, inarticulate. Dropping down with some small measure of leverage.

But another hand encloses his waist, limiting. Fingers spanning below his ribs and pressing towards his navel, the fire below it sure to be felt by both of them. Keith growls and gyrates as best he can, possessed and wordlessly begging Shiro for another finger that stretches his needy hole not a moment later.

The thickness of them turn him stupid. Each pass against a rim that tries so hard to suck them deeper, flaring until all his blood rushes south. Every feeling magnified to a million and rising.

“C’mon,” he pants, fingers digging into flesh.

Shiro chuckles against him, lips sucking pretty bruises along his neck and taunting, “Think you can take me already?”

If he didn’t know how large Shiro’s cock was, he’d think the man was purposely trying to tease, but he’ll never forget the girthy length that bobs against the cleft of his ass. How it splits, and bulges. How deep inside it gets.

Instead of answering, Keith yanks on Shiro’s hair, claiming his mouth and pointed teeth once more. Shiro spreading his legs to balance Keith’s thighs further apart and drive his fingers with force. Crying into Shiro’s open mouth, Keith tightens his hold.

Claws rake his stomach and Shiro growls, shifting Keith up to slick his hard, dribbling cock while Keith watches with barely contained hunger. Not wasting any time guiding it to him as soon as they’re both nice and wet.

The first intrusion burns more than Keith remembers but tonight, everything does. He’s completely consumed. Nothing but _Shiro_ and _fuck_ and _yes, more_ running through the haze of his mind that’s riding high on a staggering amount of obsessive yearning. Every inch of Shiro’s delicious length like a shot of fucking morphine.

He sinks and feels like he’s being torn apart. Moaning against the cock forcing his body to accept, a fine trembling taking over. Starting at their point of contact and spreading until he doesn’t know if it’s their movements or overwhelming need that shakes.

This time he’s uncontrollable. Bouncing too quick and working his thighs in tight, coiled springs. Shiro hissing but doing nothing to stop him, the lines of pink between his teeth driving Keith crazy. He wants to feel it again. Bares his neck and chokes on a sob when Shiro grazes them against his pulse.

Fuck, he wants it so bad.

But Shiro pounds up instead. Hard and punishing and just like that he’s on the edge. Gut twisting and balls drawing up and he’s so fucking close and that big hand wraps and tugs and—fuck it’s good—he’s almost there and he’s gasping for air and starting to shake and that hand’s clasping too low and cutting him off and fuck, fuck—

“ _Fuck_ ,” Keith wails. “Nooo!” His whole frame convulses. A violent jerking with the spurt that doesn’t come and he sobs anew.

Shiro’s deep voice rumbles against him. “Thought I’d let you come that easy?” His leer is wicked. “I’m not done with you yet, sweetheart.”

Then the world flips. Keith’s face pressed to the pillow and splayed on his stomach a moment before strong hands grasp his hips and tug, ass held high with Shiro crouched behind. Fire actually runs over his skin. Blue flames consuming Keith’s hands and arms before he can douse them, scorching the sheets and trembling in Shiro’s tight clutch. His cock throbs, heat dying with a howl that wants to leave Keith’s anguished mouth.

“Please,” he cries.

“Please what?”

Keith’s eyes roll back and he bites the pillow as Shiro spreads his cheeks. Exposing his used hole to push the mess of lube and pre-come back inside. Long fingers stroking.

“Nngh.” Keith struggles and thinks to himself, _fucking, fuck me._

Without warning Shiro’s palm cracks along his backside. The resounding slap a thundering crash in the mostly silent room. Silent but for the moan that rips Keith’s throat and flushes down to his chest. _Behave,_ comes Shiro’s voice in his head and he hits Keith again.

If it weren’t for Shiro’s big hand still clasped at his hip, Keith would collapse. Out of his mind and totally gone except for a litany of, _please, oh please, please, please._

“You do make a sight,” muses Shiro, pushing against Keith with a slide of his cock just wide of the mark. “But I’m tired of taking you like this.”

An image clear as day flits behind Keith’s screwed up eyes. Him strapped to a table and spread wide. Panting and trying to push his ass into Shiro’s face. He remembers it. The first time Shiro took him, when he wanted nothing more than to feel those teeth bite down.

Shadows wrap around his body. Smooth and stroke and the air’s so thick he suffocates on it. Feels the smoke climb down his throat, to choke his lungs. Heaving on breath that won’t come and he’s burning so bright he feels like the sun.

“Shiro,” he pleads, “ _Shiro._ ”

Teeth press against his inner thigh, a slow inhale all he gets before they sink.

Keith yells with the bite. Nothing but pleasure replacing the blood Shiro sucks with cascading waves that white his sense completely. Cock swollen and heavy, he swears he’s coming though nothing bursts free. Floating mid air and awash in a bliss that he helplessly groans from the depths of his soul.

Shiro’s ravenous with it. Deep pulls on Keith’s femoral artery with sloppy suction leaving blood to trickle. Luxuriating in fire and brimstone and lust. Holding Keith captive with a tongue, longer than it should it be, licking down his trembling leg to catch every bit.

“Keith.” Shiro swears, burying his face so close to Keith’s heat and lapping at the gushing wounds.

Unintelligible and clawing the bed sheets for more it’s a wonder Keith has the strength to push back, but somehow, he does. Past begging and straight into desperation. Knowing he’d do _anything_ to get Shiro’s cock back inside his puffy hole that’s clenching around the fingers Shiro thrusts in. Still he whimpers.

 _More_. His mouth shapes words his brain’s forgotten.

“Still need it?” Shiro purrs. A mocking question when Keith’s sobbing with how much he needs. The pillow wet with tears and drool beneath him.

When Shiro flips him again he flops like a doll. Sprawled limbs loose and easy to manipulate as Shiro bends him in half. Legs over shoulders so wide it’s like being cuffed to a spreader bar. He swears Shiro’s cock is larger when it slips back in, pushing against his stomach and felt up in his diaphragm. Keith’s hands slapping at nothing with the loss of higher functions, drifting in and out until Shiro’s hand closes over his throat. Eyes bulging, mouth dropped open and every moan caught in the way Shiro chokes him. Pressure tight.

He’s plowing into Keith. Rough slaps bouncing him higher up the mattress and headboard knocking against the wall.

 _That’s it, sweetheart_ , Shiro speaks to his frazzled thoughts, _taking me so well._

He can feel Shiro’s satisfaction. The delight he takes in using Keith’s body and owning it. How the sight of Keith’s reddening face above his fist and the way Keith’s insides squeeze around him egg him on. Keith tilts his head as much as he can and locks slotted eyes with the hungry vampire nailing his sensitive spot dead on.

 _Again,_ he begs.

Immediately Shiro releases his throat, grabbing his wrists to hold him down as fangs rip through his neck. A helpless, pathetic noise the only soundtrack to Keith’s earth-shattering climax the moment teeth touch skin. Time nothing but a construct as bliss ripples over his wildly trembling body again and again and again. Come spurting in an endless stream to messily mix with the blood and sweat between their bodies.

Growling and bearing down, Shiro slams harder. Not even drinking but pulling on the punctures just to taste Keith’s blood at the moment of implosion. The vibrancy of Keith’s ecstasy tipping him over to bury deep and fill Keith to overflowing.

And Keith feels it all.

Eyes wide and unseeing with nothing to do but puddle beneath the bulk that pins him down. Mewling in overstimulation and wishing Shiro’s seed were closer to his mouth.

Keith gasps for air, lungs struggling under the weight but it feels so good that he whimpers when Shiro rolls. Freeing his numb hands and rubbing against the pulse that beats erratic against rough fingers. Shiro licks at his neck. Murmurs something that sounds like, “good boy,” but Keith’s already heading off and towards oblivion. Black like the shadows that fold around him taking over.

･･ ☾･･

When he first cracks his eyes it’s to total darkness. The only hint it’s daytime, a bright beam of light that forces its way through the opening on top of his heavy curtains. But when he goes to move, he finds himself trapped. A heavy arm and heavier body draped against his back. Keith panics for a moment, pushing back until the man behind him rolls to the side. The dead weight of Shiro entirely still.

Rubbing his eyes, the night comes back to Keith in a rush. Being used, being sated, being _bitten._ Not once but thrice and he flings himself up with the memory and need to take inventory. All of him is there, battered and bruised and more than a little sore. He’s also mostly clean, the many fluids from last night wiped away. Surprised, he looks to Shiro and finds the vampire flat on his back and immobile, for all intents and purposes looking beyond the grave. No rise and fall of his chest. No steadily ticking beat of his heart.

It’s creepy enough that Keith has to pry himself from bed. Careful not to let in the sun as he slips from the room, wearily trudging to the bathroom. From there he checks himself out. Eyes darting immediately to his neck and two small, pink telling dots. Tentatively he circles the pads of his fingers, warmth emitting. When he pushes against them, he feels the trace of Shiro’s touch and shivers in something more than just the cold.

He doesn’t remember leaving his kitchen in such disarray, but when he pads his way in, the bloodied rags and empty packages lining his counter are intense. The smell of copper pennies and spice clinging to more than just himself. He’s slow to move, but he knows a half assed clean and full assed shower are essential.

Sparing a moment to peek in on Shiro and ensure that he’s actually still with him—at least he thinks he is—he throws on some sweats and gathers the garbage to take out back. The lonely elevator ride feeling weird in its mundaneness after a night of crazy vampire fucking. But he’s smirking when he exits, bits of last night flashing behind his eyes. The idea of crawling back into bed after a shower and pressing himself against Shiro running his imagination.

It’s only when he throws the trash bag high in the bin that he realizes his mistake. A hulking shadow looms behind, Keith’s fingers grasping empty air at the place his knife should be. But fuck, it’s in his apartment. He throws an elbow, trying to duck out of the arms coming at him but it’s too late, the sucker punch to his temple perfectly aimed and knocking him off course.

Stars pop and he sways, too dazed to stop the sleeper hold that wraps around his neck. Bracing his feet, he tries to shove but the metal arm stays locked, fierce strength behind it. He scrabbles at it anyway, his last thought to call out when something cold plunges below his ear. Ice flowing and paralyzing every muscle.

The last thing he hears before the world goes dark is a low and sinister, “Your empress awaits.”


	5. The Beginning of the End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HIM - [The Beginning of the End](https://youtu.be/Ax34mzkmjCw)

It’s the smell that wakes him first. A putrid, rotting stench that slides down his nostrils and yanks. Fills his lungs with bile and a burning desire to heave what little is left in his stomach.

It’s the smell that wakes him, but it’s the heavy breathing snarl that shoots him upwards. Stars bursting and head pounding, and it hurts to open his eyes as they protest with a watery ache.

“Sleep well?” A menacing voice croons from somewhere behind.

Keith tries to find it but bangs his head against solid bars he hadn’t noticed at his back. Pitching forward and barely getting his arms out to catch himself, the laughing voice ricochets within Keith’s brain. His hands land in filth. Not mud or dirt, but something worse. A tar black substance coating the floor colder than ice. It feels old, layered. You could scrub for days and never remove it. Squeezing his eyes shut, he tries to remember where he went wrong. 

He remembers the dumpster behind his building, the elevator down.

His eyes widen—recalling the vampire he left in his bed. The knife right there in his room.

_Shit._

“Crying already?” the voice calls out. “We haven’t even begun.”

Keith grits his teeth, pushing up on hands and knees and rising to his feet. Wobbly at first, though he’d never give anyone the satisfaction of seeing. He takes a deep breath, narrowing his gaze and turns. Coming face to face with who he already knows to be his captor.

Sendak stands on the other side of wrought iron bars, close enough that Keith could grab him if he dared. A horrific shadow of man and machine. He sneers at Keith. Hatred and venom seething but his fist does nothing more than grind against its own metal casing. His mechanical eye clicking. “You’ve caused so much trouble.”

Keith glares, rubbing ichor off against his thighs and squinting to make him out in the dark. Suffocated light peeking through in a burning haze that lengthens Sendak’s outline impossibly large. Thick shoulders like rocky slabs of mountainous terrain. Still Keith balls his hands and silently searches the man for any point of weakness.

“What do you want?” Keith asks, voice raw but strong.

A garish smile stretches Sendak's lips, nothing but teeth and mottled black gums. “It’s not what I want,” he says, eyes flicking to the side and jerking his head.

Men come for Keith, the door to his cell shaking and shrivelled hands reaching. With horror, Keith realizes they’re not men at all but the creatures from before. The ones with their twisted bodies and mangled limbs.

Dark, vicious claws rip at his arm as he pulls away on instinct, deep lines tearing through his skin. Jagged teeth snap and it takes three of them to drag him from his cell as he fights and kicks.

“Here,” Sendak roars and they throw him, the adrenaline in Keith’s body propelling him forward as he smacks into Sendak and has no time to correct before a hand the size of his face grips his throat.

Heart pummeling his chest, Keith’s fingers scrabble against the hold, slipping over smooth alloy. Sendak’s powerful arm squeezes hard, multicoloured lights blinking into existence as Keith’s toes lift from the ground.

“You cannot fight us,” Sendak growls, tightening his fist for Keith to splutter on dying air. Face flooding with blood that pools and cracks through the whites of his eyes. “You’ve already lost.”

For a moment Keith thinks this is it, with his feet dangling and his body jerking in a last, desperate need for oxygen. His lungs burn and pop, his vision goes black and he’s overtaken by nameless yearning. A cavernous ache that this is how it ends.

But then he drops. Stone cold and hard enough to rattle his skull as it smacks the ground. Keith heaves in violence, curled at Sendak’s feet.

“Get him out of here,” Sendak sneers. Right before Keith passes out.

･･ ☾･･

This time it’s movement that wakes him. Right above. Hooded figures looming overhead like falling angels in blinding light. Their shadows warped in wavering pupils. Keith feels as though he’s wrapped in fuzz. Slumped and blinking back the fog. Stuffed with cotton and vision stuttering in stop and go.

Something about them feels familiar, a tug in the recesses of his mind that he struggles to access but they move too fast for him to catch. Methodical movements precise. Keith can’t tell what’s happening until his shirt falls away. Resistance hitting as he tries to rise, preventing his body from moving at all.

“What—” he croaks. Throat blazing in a sudden jolt of pain, his voice little more than a haggard rasp.

He coughs and chokes. Tries again. “What’re you doing?”

Nobody answers. The blurry shapes taking form as two distinct bodies come to focus. Their faces hidden yet working together in seamless perfection. Their motions memorized.

Something cold drags across his chest, his flesh pebbling into frigid bumps when cool air hits its path. The harsh fluorescent spotlight bearing down and turning his skin almost translucent. But his mind still lags behind his eyes. He can’t make sense of it. Can’t figure out their purpose. In any scenario he might’ve thought he’d end up in, this was not it.

One breaks away and Keith snaps to it, furrowed brows and pursed lips. It moves almost like floating, its black robes billowing behind and he’s so close to grasping this dreadful sense of déjà vu. Teetering on the edge and kicking up his sluggish heart.

There’s a cabinet opening, hidden things glinting within and Keith’s mouth drops with his widening eyes. The throbbing lump of his throat constricting hard.

He watches as the figure drags a hand over metal instruments hung from the doors. Clamps. Cutters. Surgical tools and deadlier looking objects staring Keith down in hard, shining steel. It picks its way towards a row of drawers placed in the center. Slowly pulling out a middle tray in time with the spider’s crawl of fear that trickles down Keith’s spine.

“Shit,” he whispers, confused thoughts clearing in a sudden panic when it turns to face him.

Pale mask. Hooded robe.

They’re fucking _Druids._

He tries to free himself, struggling now in earnest. No longer placid but just as helpless with his arms and legs tightly pressed across a slab of table to which he’s strapped. Bound and captive.

The Druid grabs a syringe, sharp and pointed and held aloft as it reaches for a vial that swirls with bubbling liquid gold.

And then it looks at Keith.

“Don’t!” Keith cries but the Druid quickly fills the syringe and stalks forward.

He struggles harder. The voice in his head shouting out a terrified string of _out, out, get the fuck out._

In his cold sweat of panic, Keith forgets his power, but it doesn’t forget him. A wild surge bursting forth to build beneath his skin and he grasps at it, frenzied. Pulls it towards his chest and feels it flare and just as he tries to set it free the forgotten Druid beside him blasts.

Keith feels his energy ripped from his body like a shredding of his essence, only to turn and rebound back. Hot and angry and twice as powerful. Searing him from inside out.

He’s sure he’s screaming, feels his voice break with the effort, but the blinding agony is all consuming. Shattering his bones in painful pieces that gouge and fray.

And then it’s gone, as quick as it came, but the damage is done. Leaving him charred and mute with tears stuck to his eyes and head lolling. Watching the syringe rise above his chest. Terror climbing until it’s clawing at his ravaged throat. Until he’s choking on air and the needle plunges above his heart and then he breaks.

Nausea hits and he jerks on the table. At first, it’s a menace, something he thinks he can fight, but then it crests. Then his insides buckle and his back arches and he’s spewing blood with a vengeance so forceful one of his arms breaks free. He uses it to roll, to let the gore and bile pool beside him instead of all over but it’s much too late for that.

There’s yelling and hands and the blood through his ears blocking everything but the savage upheaval seizing his body.

His ribs crack.

“...–e’s crashing…”

Guts recoil.

“...get…”

Crimson flows like magma.

“–now!”

He falls, dissociates. 

Lets it all go.

････

Wind whips at his face. Grains of sand carried in a cooling draft. Keith ducks his head and hides inside the collar of his shirt, bright eyes the only thing he dares to peek out.

Someone chuckles beside him and a heavy arm wraps around his shoulders, pulling him into a body that’s more than twice his size. He lifts his gaze; sees the smile his dad gives him and comes out of his shell just a little.

“Okay there, boy?”

Keith nods, holding his dad's steely stare and feels him shift around so his massive body blocks the wind’s path. Sandy beads left to swirl in the currents that curl around them.

The night sky sits above. A multitude of stars set in an endless sea.

They do this sometimes. Come out into the desert landscape after the sun has long since set. Sweaters and blankets and their pet Cosmo Keith swears is more wolf than dog. Huddled together and watching the stars.

Keith remembers this night. Close to approaching his eighth birthday. He remembers it because his father had died two weeks later.

But in this moment, they sit. Silent and peaceful.

A peace Keith hasn’t known since.

“Dad?” Keith asks, venturing to break the quiet between them.

His dad doesn’t move his gaze from the stars. “Hmm?”

“How come we don’t talk about mom?”

It’s something he’s been wanting to ask for months now. Ever since Jimmy G teased him for not knowing his mom and even though Keith had shut him up quick, the words had stuck.

They hardly move but Keith can sense how his dad stiffens.

“What d’you want to know?” his dad asks carefully, still looking above them.

“Well.” Keith figures he might as well just say it, even as a kid, he’s always been blunt. “Why did she leave us?”

Finally, his dad looks at him, something sad in the pinch of his eyes. “Is that what you think? That she chose to leave?”

Yeah, it is. But when his dad says it like that he falters, nodding instead of speaking. He looks away, down at the hands he has wrapped around knees.

“Keith…” His dad falters as well, lost in uncertainty. Keith hears him swallow, then tighten the arm still around his back.

It’s a few minutes before he finally speaks. “Did you know she wanted to call you Yorak?”

“What?” Keith’s eyes dart to check for the lie, but his dad hums and Keith scrunches his nose. “That’s weird.”

His dad laughs. “That’s what I thought too. You’re lucky I was there to talk her out of it.”

“But…why Yorak?”

“It was a family name.”

Keith’s not really sure how to respond. Still trying to wrap his head around anyone being named Yorak, yet alone _two_ people.

“Hey.” He feels a nudge at his side. “It means that she loved you. She wanted you to have a name she thought was noble. Something worthy of you.”

He lets that absorb. Tries to imagine having a mother that would’ve wanted things for him.

“So then...why?”

Next to him, his dad sighs. Sights now on the horizon and shadowed columns of rock and granite in the distance. “She didn’t want to. I know that much for sure, but sometimes—sometimes things happen beyond our control.”

It’s another concept Keith has a hard time understanding. “Like what?”

When his dad looks back at him, he takes Keith’s hand and squeezes. Lips pressed in a miserable line. “I can’t really say. I’m sorry Keith.” The corners of his eyes crinkle with a pained expression. “Just know that she was protecting us. Protecting _you_. She would’ve done anything for you.”

There’s more silence. Not awkward but heavy. A sorrow that pulls at both of them. Keith’s dad tugs him into his arms, tightly wrapping him up against his chest where he speaks into Keith’s hair. “I’m sorry we don’t talk about her much. It’s hard sometimes, but if you want to, I can try.”

Keith fights against the sting in his eyes. Choosing to nod his head where he’s buried instead.

“Okay.” His dad kisses the top of his head. “Let’s talk.”

････

“He’s been tainted.”

Keith gasps back to life. Face tight. Everything tight. Like he’s grown too big for his casing. 

Pulsing. Throbbing.

“See.”

He’s wrapped in velvet. A blankless void.

Frozen fingers press against him. Poking at his neck, his wrist. His thigh now bare.

“This should’ve been caught.”

“High priestess, we—”

“Silence. I don’t care how it happened.” This voice is different than the others. A cold commanding that suggests decades of being followed. If he had anything left to give, he’d try open his eyes. “We’ve come too far to fumble now.”

The hand digs, grips at his flesh that’s blissfully starting to numb.

“It takes three days for the venom to run its course. Keep him breathing until then.”

“Yes, empress. Vrepit sa.”

He floats again, at least he thinks so. Conscious mind scattered into particles. Unwound. Dissolved.

･･ ☾･･

A steady drip echoes. The kind that conjures images of basement dungeons and torture chambers. Damp concrete with mouldy walls and exposed piping that someone inevitably finds themselves chained to. He’s been here for hours, maybe even days.

And he's alive.

That’s the first thing he solidly grasps and its with a laboured groan that’s more a sundering of his soul. 

Where before there’d been suffering and lancing pain, now he slowly burns. The ends of his nerves hurt and regenerating. His head a swollen, Frankensteinian mess of tissue and bone haphazardly thrown together.

The stink is here as well. But it smells so much like he feels that it’s hard to be bothered. Maybe if he stayed like this he could sink into the floor. Become one with the viscera he knows must be coating it.

“Pssst, hey.” Gets hissed not far from him.

Keith flops his head in the direction it came, unable to do much more than that.

“Quick. I don’t have much time.”

It takes everything Keith has to pry open an eye. Even then it’s so caked together and filmy that he sees nothing at all.

“C’mon...hurry.”

He grunts, trying to slide a swollen hand towards his face but the effort is too great. There’s a clicking of a tongue and then he’s gripped by his shoulder and hauled upwards, head protesting fiercely. He falls back against the bars, eyes squeezed tight in an agonized grimace. A hand grips his chin and cold touches his lips before water comes rushing out. Dousing his blackened esophagus in a fast deluge that quickly chokes. He barks and coughs, managing to raise a hand to clutch at his throat.

“Sorry,” someone murmurs, now right in front of him.

Still feeling like death warmed over, the gentleness goes unnoticed. “G’ff.” Keith weakly tries to push away.

“Look, they’ll be back any minute, so either take this now or suffer.”

Keith blinks. Vision coming to in spots that are no longer completely black. When the person grabs his face again, instead of arguing, he drinks. Gulps as large as his bruised throat will let him with long rivulets pouring out the sides of his mouth until the pummeling jackhammer of his brain eases just a bit.

“There, that wasn’t so bad, right?”

There’s a man crouched beside him. Tall bars between their bodies with his hands thrust through. His hair a wiry, sandy blonde that doesn’t cover the scar that runs against his cheekbone. Ending just before large, hazel eyes that watch Keith intently.

At least Keith thinks he’s a man.

“Who...” Talking hurts, his voice nearly destroyed. “Who are you?”

The man sets down his cup, hands coming up to grip at the bars. “I’m a prisoner, like you.”

Keith eyes him suspiciously. There's no denying the clothes he wears are rags. A dark body suit with faded purple overshirt so large it hangs off a shoulder covering his scrawny frame. Sure, there’s some muscle there, but if it came down to it Keith could take him no problem. 

Or—he winces as he tries to readjust his position—at least he could’ve, before.

Noticing Keith’s size up, the man snorts. “I promise, I’m only here to help. The Galra have imprisoned me for years.”

“Then maybe you’d do anything to get out.” Keith snaps, sliding further away from him.

“Jesus.” The guy drops his head with a disbelieving shake, the corner of his lips tugging wryly.

He looks like he’s about to say more but decides last second to simply stand, swiping the grime from his knees though the attempt is futile. Grabbing a pile of clothing, he throws them through the bars of Keith’s cell. They’re black and grey. Probably the same as the man wears now and Keith realizes with a shock that he’s currently naked. His entire body shivering.

“Those are for you. I’m Matt by the way.” 

The man, Matt, waits for Keith to move but he doesn’t. A weird sort of standoff taking place until Matt taps his foot and throws up his hands. “Fine. If you want to get hypothermia, that’s cool. Just don’t tell anyone I gave you that,” he nods towards the cup that’s still half full and within Keith’s reach. “They only need you alive, not coherent.”

He hesitates a moment, maybe hoping Keith might say _something_ but Keith stays still. Partly in fear this could all be a trap, but mostly because his body’s not cooperating yet.

“Okay,” Matt finally says, “I’m sure you’ll see me again, you’ve got some nasty…” his hands flutter at all of Keith, “everything, so just drink that and get dressed. There’s nothing else to do anyway.”

It’s a reminder of how helpless he is. The bars at his back unyielding. Bars that stretch towards the ceiling and disappear to run the length of the wall. Ending about eight feet away only to section off into another cell. And another. And so many that the room he’s in must be home to dozens if not more.

But before he gets caught up, he snaps back to Matt’s retreating back. “Why are you helping me?”

Matt freezes at the door, turns to Keith with an arched eyebrow and lifted arms. There’re manacles locked around each wrist, a long chain dangling between them and Keith feels like an idiot for only noticing now. Matt’s face twists into an approximation of a smile. “We’re in this together,” he says, then knocks heavily on the iron door.

A second later it opens to reveal a guard. Taller than any human Keith’s ever seen and decked head to toe in a uniform of black and orange. A bright insignia strewn across its chest. They snarl at Matt and jerk his shackles, Matt struggling to keep his balance as he trips his way out the door that slams behind them.

For minutes Keith stares at its hinges, then back at the cup as he weighs his options. His head still pounds, the pressure behind his eyes throbbing as though they might burst, but it no longer feels split into pieces. He chews his lip, and then, with monumental effort, forces himself to down the drink as quick as he can. When finished, he tucks it behind himself and finally feels somewhat okay.

If okay means barely functioning, anyway.

The clothes Matt left behind sit close, but instead he focuses on his surroundings. No exits to be found but the one Matt left through. No windows, no vents.

Nothing but weak light striping across the room to climb its impenetrable walls. 

Groaning, Keith drops his head against the wall and wonders how he could’ve been so stupid. So fucked out and senseless that he left the sanctuary of home without a second thought. Even with all that's happened he can still feel the places Shiro reached. The bites on his body sizzling. He’s an idiot, he knows. And yet deep in the pettiest place of his ego, he can’t help but hope that somewhere, Shiro’s out there fighting to find him.

Of course, he’s _looking._ Shiro made it perfectly clear the only thing he wants is revenge on the Galra, and Keith’s been trying really hard to remember that fact ever since Shiro had him tied and blindfolded. Lust and physical release were one thing, but as he stares up at the darkened ceiling, he can no longer deny that maybe, to him, the thought of Shiro might mean something more.

Motion catches his eye from a couple of cells over, a shift of shadow. It’s not immediately apparent, but when he strains, he suddenly realizes he’s not alone. There’s a prisoner, like himself, only ten feet away. Just a lump of sprawling fabric covered in filth. The more he looks, the more he sees they’re all like that. Dawning horror rising to find cells containing forms so small it could only be clothing but for their subtle hissing breaths.

In the cell next to his, a dark head raises from the floor, peering at Keith and he gasps. Loose skin hangs from their bones in a sickly shade of decaying green, little more than a skeleton. Their face sunken and barren. He looks away but every one’s the same. These wasted beings stuck between living and dead, a ghoulish imitation of what they once were.

The fear that muted itself in the midst of his body’s pain comes crashing in ten-fold and terrible, and Keith shivers from more than the cold. With trembling fingers, he twists them into the prison garb Matt left and gingerly sets to work. Though it almost feels like giving up with every inch the body suit covers, in the end, he’d rather be a prisoner like Matt then end up like those around him.

Silently, he prays he might get to be so lucky.

･･ ☾･･

In the times he sleeps, he dreams of his mother. Plagued by visions he’s not even sure have happened. Like her large face peering at him with a tiny hand clutching her finger. Her soft voice singing in the dark. But nothing he remembers as he startles awake except a vague feeling of love and loss that clings to him in every waking moment he spends alone. The groans of the other inmates the only thing breaking his dreadful silence.

Matt comes back during one of his fever dreams. Mumbling to someone and pointing to spots on Keith’s body he couldn’t cover which is basically all of him. His weak, beaten muscles good for only so long before he inevitably lapsed into half forgotten snippets of time.

His mother’s face hovers over Matt’s, speaking in a voice that’s low and concerned. “That needs to be cleaned.”

The Druid behind his mother doesn’t answer, staring through slits in the mask that covers its face and intentions.

Later, when Matt returns to find Keith lucid, his hands are full of gauze and wrap. He doesn’t try to pry or really talk at all but for simple requests like repositioning. He barely even looks at Keith but when he does, his gaze is shuttered. Keith swallows his need to push Matt away and forces himself to speak instead.

“Are you like the prison doctor or something?” Keith asks as Matt tends to the oozing wound across his pec.

Matt snorts, eyeing him for second before a hesitant lip quirks. “Actually, I’m a scientist. Mostly molecular biology and biochemistry yet somehow they think I’m qualified for this.”

“This” being stitching Keith up and slipping him another dose of secret solution that Keith had gratefully taken. He sips on it now, eyes glued to Matt’s hands and the way he skillfully cleans and wraps. The effects immediately felt as Keith’s mind and thoughts clear with every swallow.

It’s little more than water, but the slightly powdery taste doesn’t go unnoticed this time around. “What’s in this anyway?”

Glancing up from his work, Matt scans the area before responding, nothing but half dead hostage’s privy to their whispering. “You know quint?” When Keith splutters mid gulp, he rushes to continue, “Don’t worry, the amount is tiny.”

But Keith glares into the cup, searching for anything malicious though it’s hard to see in his dank cell.

“Seriously,” Matt says. “It’s not even close to what they gave you earlier.”

“That was quint?” Keith gasps, wincing as Matt presses the compress particularly hard.

“Sort of...” Baring his teeth apologetically, Matt concentrates as he quickly finishes wrapping the wound, pristine white gauze looking terribly out of place in this hell hole. When finished, he lowers his voice further, gazing up at Keith. “The stuff in the syringe, it was yellow, yeah? Almost glowing?”

Slowly, Keith nods.

Matt looks grim when he confirms, “Then it wasn’t just quint. It was pure quintessence.”

Without thinking, Keith eyes fall to the bundle of rags the next cell over. A chill running through his body as he remembers the violent way his body reacted. “Is that what they’ve been given too?”

Following his stare, Matt’s brow furrows as he asks, “The Hollowed?” Recoiling when it moves a distorted arm out from its burrow. “No, that’s something much worse.”

His eyes go far away. Stuck in a place that has his breath coming quick and shallow. Cautiously, Keith thinks about reaching out but then Matt startles to with a shake. Picking up his work where he lays a final piece of tape across Keith’s chest.

“That should do it,” he murmurs, beginning to gather up the supplies left strewn on the ground and avoiding Keith’s gaze as he does.

But— “Matt,” Keith has to ask it, has to _know._ “What are the Galra doing here?”

Matt’s shaking his head before he even finishes. “I don’t know.”

“You have to know something.”

“I told you, I’m a prisoner.” He still doesn’t look at Keith, continuing to stack and gather.

Keith tightens his jaw. “You also told me you’ve been here awhile.”

“So?” Matt stands abruptly, makes to pull away and there’s no way Keith can let that happen. He grabs onto Matt’s leg, clenching his fingers tight.

“So, help me,” he says, some of his desperation leaking through. “I don’t know what I’m up against and I can’t fight them like this.”

“There’s no fighting them,” Matt whispers, but his face looks torn. Chewing his cheek as his hand beats erratically at his thigh.

“ _Matt_ ,” Keith tries, waiting for the man to meet his eyes. Letting them say the _please_ he’d never allow himself to utter.

The lip between Matt’s teeth is bitten red in crescent shapes when he drops his head and releases it. Matt runs a hand through his hair, the chains of his shackles clinking, as he looks around them. And then, hesitation clear, he drops back to his knees.

“I can’t tell you much,” he says in a nervous rush and Keith nods while he eagerly pulls closer to the bars that separate them. Matt’s eyes track his face in a few quick back and forths before he finally starts talking.

“When we were first brought here, my dad and I were sent to the lab to study the effects of an unknown compound. They wanted to know how it reacted to organic matter, but it wouldn’t take.” Keith watches as his hands wring the bandage still held tight. The lines of Matt’s face pulled taut. “When preliminary testing yielded no results, we were forced to test subjects,” Matt swallows, “ _people_. It... looked harmless enough, kind of this beautiful sparkling gold fluid, but everyone—human, fae, demon—all of them rejected it outright. We tried to tell her but...she wouldn’t listen.”

His story floats in the quiet, stealing the air from their lungs. Keith feels a prickling under his skin as his energy flickers back to life. Uneasy and tentative.

“I don’t know what she was doing, but the compound came back darker and darker, until the only way it resembled itself was in thickness. The first test subject after that was human and I can still—” Matt chokes on air, “I can still hear her screams.”

Forearms tightening with his fists, Matt takes a second. There’s nothing Keith can think to say. No way to console but he leans more into the bars.

With a shuddering breath, Matt’s eyes shine. “But she survived…or rather, her body did. It was broken and cursed and her face was empty. I don’t even think _she_ was actually there at all. I don’t think any of them are anymore.”

Just then a screeching starts at the end of the room. All at once, loud and wretched. It’s too hard to tell in the lowered lights but it looks like one of the inmates is in a throe of rage. Arms flailing wildly as the noise goes from high and whining to deep and primitive. A snarl Keith immediately recognizes.

His eyes fly to Matt for guidance, but the other man’s have fallen shut in resignation instead of fear and there’s no time to ask before the door flies open and guards rush in two by two. They flank someone, the man revealed when they peel off to form a solid line outside the cell whose occupant has gone feral.

Sendak steps forth, his armor similar in colouring to that of the guards though miles more intricate. His lips peel back as he views the creature now slamming itself against the bars.

“Come now Haxus,” Sendak tsks. “Is that any way to greet your commander?”

All the blood leaves Keith’s face. His old handler throwing back his head to howl in a way that bares wicked looking teeth. Each one needle sharp and gleaming. Keith tries to reconcile the man he knew to this. This monster that’s nothing at all alike.

With a grunt from Sendak, three guards move to the cell, two grabbing onto any part of Haxus they can reach while the third plunges a black syringe into his neck. Within seconds he stops his writhing, cracked lips folding over teeth and beady eyes sinking into their sockets. When he slumps forward, they remove him from his cell. Vacant face looking lifeless and Keith gets what Matt meant when he called them ‘the Hollowed’.

“Take him to the barracks, training begins immediately,” Sendak instructs. “Perhaps now he’ll learn how to properly serve his empire.”

As they start to file out, Keith hopes against hope that he might go unnoticed, probably filthy enough to blend. He lowers his head, Matt’s having never lifted to begin with, but the marching still stops dead in front of them.

“You there,” Sendak calls and Matt straightens, timorous energy twitching. “You’re wasting your time on that one.”

“S-sir, the Druids,” Matt stutters. “They sent me.”

Surreptitiously, Keith looks up, but Sendak’s eyes are already on him. Probingly sweeping over him like a disgusting curiosity, the line of his lips thinning before they move to where Matt half stands at attention.

“Well, I’m telling you to stop. His time is soon.”

“But—”

Sendak’s voice booms in flinching reverberation. “Are you questioning me?”

Sparing Keith one sorry glance, Matt shuffles to his feet to join the guard, pointedly keeping his gaze to the floor and thousands of questions unanswered.

Mouth gone dry with fear; Keith feels the pulse of his heart beating his throat. He struggles to pull himself up to standing. Hands slipping on the bars as his bodysuit hangs around his waist. He wants to call out, wants to beg Matt not to leave him like this but they’re already gone. The ghost of Sendak’s chuckle sinking over.

On his knees with face pressed against the bars Keith fights to breathe. Currents of panicked electricity running over his muscles. Flightless and berserk.

He tries to use it. Tries to let it run through his fingers and into the bars like Thace had shown him but ends up shouting as his biceps tear in the effort. His cage unshakeable.

Not even two hours later they come for him. Unhinged and crazed with every terrified thought of what they might do.

Guards join Sendak in escorting him through halls as gross as his prison. If Keith wasn’t numb with his subconscious’ need to protect itself, he might’ve tried to memorize the way, maybe even thought of escape. But rational fear has long since left. Consumed terror growing with every step. Each feeling closer to death.

They bring him to another room. Larger than the last and he doesn’t see the glass holding cell—too preoccupied by a set up so horrifically familiar—until something flings itself against the barrier. Keith’s eyes bugging and his tired mind working overtime as thunderous clouds of destruction trapped inside fade to reveal—

“Shiro?”

He mouths it more than speaks it. Too shocked to see Shiro actually there and _trapped._

The vampire takes one look at him, wide eyed and stumbling back and Keith has to wonder how broken he looks for a reaction like that. Shiro’s lips move, a word Keith doesn’t catch, and then he explodes. Throwing everything he has at the invisible wall. Claws out, shadows deadly, strings of saliva spit from a rabid mouth. He’s screaming at the top of the lungs, thrashing in blind fury but Keith doesn’t hear it. Stuck on bloodied bursts of Shiro’s face and hands when the smoke clears.

“He can’t hear us.” Sendak speaks from behind Keith’s ear and Keith flinches back. “He’s only here to watch.” He strides towards the wall, hand pressing a switch beneath one solitary intercom. “Isn’t that right? _Champion_.”

Something passes between them. Loathing not the right emotion but close. Shiro’s fangs drop and he steps to the glass. “When I get out here—” he starts, smoky voice full of rage, but Sendak drops his hand and the rest is lost. There’s murder in Shiro’s eyes. Grey steel cold and hard and it tightens Keith’s belly.

 _Fuck, Shiro,_ Keith desperately thinks, _what do we do?_

“He won’t hear you like that either.”

She melts from the shadows, slipping like a Druid across the floor but Keith knows the difference immediately. Hairs rise along his skin, energy suddenly frantic. It wraps around Keith’s sternum, protectively.

“Empress,” Sendak breathes and drops to one knee, her presence striking Keith with a wild urge to do the same, but he resists.

Her straggled hair falls flat down her chest. Flaring amber eyes the only thing seen beneath her oversized hood. No pupils, no iris, just the same unearthly glow Keith’s seen in Shiro so many times, but they don’t feel angry. It’s not wrath that sweeps over to prod at his mind, it’s appraisal.

“Yes,” she practically purrs, “your potential is strong.”

Like a mouse in the trap of a poisonous snake, his energy panics the closer she gets. Pawing and trembling with nowhere to run. The step he takes back is involuntary. As are the flames that erupt; blue and over his heart.

Her dangerous smile glints in the shadow of her robes. “You are nothing now, but soon that will change.”

Dread wells and the flames burn higher. He lets them run to his palms and doesn’t think twice before lunging. Nothing planned but an instinctual fight for his life and it’s why her laughter flays his pride when she freezes him with a flick of her wrist.

“Prepare him,” she says coolly, turning her back like he’s no threat at all. Worse than any restraint, he’s completely paralyzed. Can’t even move to blink.

Forgotten in his pathetic attempt, Sendak sneaks from behind. Large, awful hands grasping his waist and stale breath rustling the hair at his nape. “My pleasure.”

But instead of bringing Keith to the waiting table, he draws him back. Body too close as he’s put on display before Shiro’s cage. Turned until another set of golden orbs assess but the madness burning off these is enough to melt carbon.

Shiro’s grown in height, larger than Keith’s ever seen and more monstrous. Skin stretched and tight over a mouth that’s nothing but teeth and fangs. Smoke held close but ready to strike and his eyes shooting a laser point into the man that presses himself against Keith’s back. Hands running over his shoulders as he starts to peel away Keith’s dignity.

Keith feels the slide of fingers across his skin like a slimed eel, the first touch shocking and horrendous. If his mouth wasn’t stuck in an open yell he’d be screaming until his voice went hoarse but it’s all internal. Used and violated as the fabric of his bodysuit falls past arms and waist. All the while Sendak’s hot stink branding.

“Mmm, a fine pet you have here, champion,” Sendak mewls with a wicked smile that never leaves Shiro’s face.

He might not be able to hear but the intent is felt. Shiro keeps himself immovably still, almost as frozen as Keith, except for a violent swelling of breath. Narrowed eyes slit and Keith wishes he could close his own. Wishes he could’ve saved them from this.

Sendak pulls the suit down and over Keith’s hips in a slow, humiliating exposure that Keith wants to tear his heart out for, but it’s almost done. Nails rake along Keith’s flank, digging hard enough to scrape blooming welts into flesh. Fingers moving to inside Keith’s thigh and pressing the faded imprint of Shiro’s bite, Sendak whispers in his ear, “Maybe when this over, I’ll let you be mine instead.”

Hips grind at his back, Sendak leaning forward to put his horrid mouth on Keith’s shoulder and the nausea’s so high Keith can taste it.

“That’s enough, Commander.”

Immediately, Sendak pulls back but not before leaving a nip almost playful. Keith has to look hard, but he sees the fine trembling of Shiro’s body, a mirror to the organs that quake within Keith’s own.

“I’ll kill you,” Shiro annunciates slow. Mute and to the smirk of Sendak’s taunt.

Then Keith is lifted and dropped on the table, cold metal biting. Guts so close to bursting it’s a miracle they haven’t. Sendak manhandles roughly, positioning him so when he drops away Keith is left to stare only at Shiro. View unobstructed and helplessly pinned.

Both of them fucked and well aware.

“You will restore glory back to the empire,” the witch's voice rings, her shadow long across his frozen body. “Queen Marmora’s power will flow once more.”

The shadow shifts, syringed outline right above.

Grey tortured eyes quiver. There’s nowhere else for Keith to look. Shiro sinks to his knees.

 _No,_ Keith thinks but can’t say.

The shadow descends as it slides home. Needle piercing and glancing off bone when a rushing of warmth infuses itself. Keith expects the force, the pain. And yet he’s demolished.

Pops of red over eyes.

Bones grinding, molecules breaking. 

Shiro’s twisted face.

It goes on forever. An agonized loop. Shattered body smashed and torn. The earthly plane left behind.

There’s light in the distance, but so far away. Further than Keith could ever reach. Time whispered on air that doesn’t exist. There, then not. But he hears it, somehow. Soft. Gentle.

“Keith.”

So far away. So familiar.

“You have to get up.”

His eyes leak. Liquified pupils oozing free. _I can’t,_ he thinks. _He knows._

“You can,” a woman says.

Quintessence wraps around his energy. Terrible in its brightness.

“Let it,” she urges. Keith tries not to sob.

The light warps. Stark void bleeding to colours of amethyst and coal. Spots of violet, of magenta. A galaxy before him.

His solar plexus spasms. Shriveling as dust and hydrogen spills forth. Ions and plasma reforming anew. He shudders and mends, head splitting and neurons firing and his essence shifting into something more.

Something powerful and out of control.

When he comes to, he’s on the ground. Energy expanding into rapid bursts his body can’t handle. Sparking and volatile.

Bits of concrete rain from the sky and it takes him awhile to realize it’s the actual building and not himself that’s rocking. A high tearing sound in the background.

Sendak’s gruff voice shouts through the din. “We’re under attack.”

“They’re too late.” The witch hisses. “The boy’s all that matters.”

Keith writhes on the floor. Skin too hot and scorching higher. Fire dancing across his skin in ungovernable flares. There’s a presence beside him but not there in body. A desperate thing calling out.

The witch continues. “We proceed as planned. Bring him to the chamber.”

Reaching out with the ravelled ends of his sanity, Keith finds the high-pitched noise. An animal trapped in a cage and throwing itself against the glass. Escape or death. It doesn’t care which.

 _Boom_ —the ground shakes again, seismic waves getting close.

“Empress.”

“Stay with the boy,” she shrieks, and Keith feels more than sees her dark energy flicker from the room.

He wants to get up, tries to press his weight into the floor but jerks like a live wire set loose. Placing a hand to his chest, his heart constricts. Irregular beating, fast then slow. The animal calls to him, urging him to set it free.

All he has to do is think it. Something sharp flung from his mind and the doors to its cage snap in a whirlwind of hurricane clouds and gale force destruction. Sendak shouts as he’s flung from Keith’s side, shadows wrapping and it’s Shiro there within the winds, picking Keith from the floor with his massive arms and careful, wicked claws.

“Keith,” he speaks, so low it’s hardly there.

“I—” Keith rasps.

But he’s still on fire. Bolts jumping from flame to flame. Shiro presses him to his chest regardless, searing flesh an afterthought and the heat that courses through them soothes. Enough that Keith can feel his power mingle with his thoughts. Enough that when he calls the flames to his heart they go as if they’d never raged.

Keith stares at Shiro in wonder, soot dark face lined with dirt and blood. His skin cracked, his hair wild, eyes still glowing in a gold as horrific as the witch’s, and still he’s the most beautiful thing Keith’s ever seen.

His hand slides up the pointy claws cradling his waist. Cuts and wounds a ravaged field across swollen skin. Shiro leans into the touch, bowing over Keith’s prone form.

“What a touching reunion.” Sendak sneers. Standing over them both with prosthetic arm alight and glowing. 

Shiro shifts protectively, smoke coiling close enough to brush the ends of Keith’s hair. “You can’t have him,” Shiro growls, hands gripping tighter. “He’s mine.”

Slowly, Shiro lowers Keith until he gets his arms beneath him. Shiro rising from his crouch and putting himself between. Squaring off against the only Galran standing in their way.

Sendak leers. “You think you can take me?” he says, hand flexing. “You couldn’t beat me with your mate, what chance do you have with your whore?”

Keith blasts him through the wall. Before Shiro can speak, before Keith even thinks. Energy forking out in a shock of waves so powerful the hole that’s left is huge. Plaster and concrete falling from deep, broken edges.

They watch each other, Shiro with lips parted in awe, and Keith with eyes so wide they’re open saucers. Both in deafening silence except for a chunk of wall that falls to the floor.

But it could never be that simple.

Sendak surges from the rubble, dust and bits of wood clinging to a frame that barely looks ruffled. His eye glows red, the cords of his neck strain. “You’re not the only one who’s been upgraded,” he snarls at them. And then, he lunges.

Keith’s still on the floor, legs crumpled beneath him but Shiro moves on instinct. Feral growl and shadows striking as he throws himself in Sendak’s path. The resounding clash an echo of thunder through the room. Shiro drives a fist across Sendak’s jaw only for it to meet in a bone thudding crunch. Sendak smiles, metal arm placed against Shiro’s chest when it powers up. Breaking from Sendak’s elbow and launching Shiro across the room.

He doesn’t even pause, turning for Keith as his arm flies back and reconnects just before throwing his fist down. Keith dodges to the side, legs weak and body weaker, rolling out too close for comfort. Reaching for his knife, he curses. Then, impatient—almost like a scold—his power rages up his arms, flames bright and Keith lets them fly, not checking to see if they land as he rolls again.

A hand grabs his hair, gripping tight enough to yank the roots and he’s hurled backwards. Sprawled on his back and air knocked from his lungs, Sendak comes into view. Fists raised and ready to strike but something dark and violent crashes into him. Keith getting only a glimpse of Shiro’s flying hair before they both evaporate in shadows.

 _Shit_.

Keith scrambles to his feet, furiously trying to guess where they’ve gone. The building rocks again, an ear-splitting rending from right outside and the door to his left flies from its hinges. Flashing light bright enough to have Keith flinching and ducking for cover.

“Keith!” someone shouts and a Blade of Marmora rushes in, their mask dissolving and it’s Thace. Relieved beyond measure and a sheen of sweat along his brow. “Oh, thank god.”

But Keith doesn’t have time. “Help me find Shiro,” he says, though as soon as he steps his knees give way, a bout of static shock passing over him.

Thace catches Keith before his face hits the floor. “What’s happened?”

Keith grits his teeth, trying to push from Thace’s hold. “Nothing.”

“Then why are you naked?”

And, fuck, Keith _forgot._ Wildly, he looks around, spots the bodysuit on the ground and stumbles over.

“They did something,” he throws over his shoulder, shaking hands making it hard to pull the suit over his leg. “I have to find Shiro. He took Sendak, I—he might need help.”

“You’re hurt.”

Keith stays silent.

Thace doesn’t say anything as Keith fumbles with the suit, sparks flying from his fingers. Melted bits cling to his skin but the scrape feels good. Grounds his jittery body. Tremors shake the floor, shouting and howls screaming through the open doorway.

When Keith is dressed Thace reaches out. “Come on, I’ll take you to Mesik.”

He side steps. “The fuck is Mesik? I already said—”

“The Druid who helped Regris, we’re—”

Keith's fire explodes, high enough Thace drops away. “No Druids,” Keith growls, hair rising in the tempest.

“Keith?”

For the first time, Thace looks alarmed. Enough that Keith has to bite his lip and try breathe through the staccato of his racing heart. The flames flutter, withering slightly but not doused. 

“No Druids,” Keith repeats and Thace raises his hands in surrender. “I’m going after Shiro and Sendak.”

Thace swallows something sour, hesitating before he nods.

It loosens Keith’s shoulders, dropping an inch and then he says, “There’s a lab with prisoners, I need you to get them out. Look for Matt, he can help.”

Thace nods again, arms outstretched like he’s going to grab him and Keith dodges, unintentionally sending a wave of energy that hits Thace like a wall. He stumbles back, forearms crossed above his face and a barrier of protection up around him. Keith’s eyes widen and he wants to apologize but there’s just. no. time. Keith makes for the door.

“ _Wait!_ ”

He whirls around, curse on the tip of his tongue but Thace cuts him off. “Charges are set for fifteen minutes, if you’re not out by then I can’t save you.”

Keith searches his face, his stiff upper neck. He’s not happy, that much is clear. But there’s resolve there too. And something that looks like trust. “I...” Keith wavers. “Thank you.”

Thace looks grim. “Don’t thank me yet.”

There’s nothing else to say. Thace grasps Keith’s shoulder and sends a pulse through his hand, his energy rippling where it swells like the charge of a battery. Keith feels it mix with his own and strengthen. 

Then Keith is turned, halfway out the door when Thace yells once more, “Hey.”

Keith’s barely looked back when something’s thrown at him, grabbing at it on reflex as the weight settles in his hand. His knife. _His blade._

It flares to life in an instant.

“Fifteen minutes.” Thace stresses. “And... go right.”

Lips curved, hard and a little manic, Keith leaves. Barrelling down hallways strobing with emergency lighting. Dark then bright, over and over.

There’s evidence of siege in every path he takes. Black ichor smeared across walls, fallen soldiers with blank eyes and mortal wounds. None of them Blades. He hears shouting in the distance, but something tells him to stay clear. Shiro wouldn’t fight Sendak for the spectacle. He wouldn’t risk anything getting in his way.

When he comes to a fork, he screeches to a stop. By now he’s figured out they’re underground and the stale air hits him hard. Death and carnage mingling. It’s impossible to know which way to go and he yells with his mounting frustration.

Which was a terrible idea because immediately he hears a growl and scraping claws. Something large and wicked tearing down the hall and he drops to a knee just as a Hollowed swipes at his chest. Pointed talons missing by millimeters.

His blade is out and swinging up, driving it back. It howls in rage, dropped on all fours with spine arched and hackles raised. Snapping its teeth, it darts forward and Keith whirls while he slices, cutting off both arms. He doesn’t even check as he sprints as best he can away from the sound of more rounding the corner.

But he’s not fast enough.

One pounces on his shoulder, sinking in serrated teeth and Keith cries out as he switches hands and blindly stabs. A chunk of him going with it when it falls away but another’s already there to take its place. Tangling legs until they’re sent flying. Keith uses the momentum to roll on his back and plunge his blade deep in its throat as it tries to swallow him whole. Thick, dark blood splatters across his face and burns. He scrambles for purchase against the slippery floor and gets taken out again by two remaining Hollowed. 

Crashing through a door at the end of the hall, Purple light floods through the haze of red Keith can’t clear from his eyes. Bodies twisting, limbs colliding. Keith takes something sharp to the gut and gasps in lost wind, his blade clattering out of sight. They’re on him in seconds. Hot breath stinging over his wounded shoulder and claws ripping at his calves. Blinding pain cracking everywhere they touch. His body bows as bolts of lightning surround, electrifying his skin. As easy as breathing, he lets it loose.

Shaking, shrieking. Silence.

Keith slides to his knees as the Hollowed drop, bracing himself with laboured breaths that rattle through his aching lungs. Around him, four monsters lie, fried and crispy. Their lingering miasma gagging and all he wants is to be somewhere else. Anywhere but here on the floor with drops of his blood plopping against concrete. But Shiro’s face swims behind his eyes, Thace’s warning fresh in his mind.

His blade shines just out of reach, Keith limping to retrieve it and taking in yet another vast room. There’s tables and tools, and further back, equipment. Not a lab but a workstation. Abandoned gloves and face masks littered over upturned chairs. Keith runs his fingers through a powdery substance left on a table and knows its quint before he even tastes it. There’s so much of it, everywhere he looks. An operation of this scale frightening in the fact it remained hidden for so long.

A flash of light catches his attention. Blurred motions flitting between columns and Keith rushes forward. Pulse jumping and almost crashing into another glass wall. Beyond it, he sees containers filled with something dark and fluid, flowing almost like quintessence and causing his energy to shudder. A shape darts out from behind, another clashing against it in sparks. When ash rises like a pyrocumulus, only to move by will and smash a container does Keith realize what he’s seeing.

Shiro and Sendak.

Warring in an intricate battle where one wrong move could spell their death. Keith palms the glass, watching in rapt fear as Sendak volleys under Shiro’s smoke, letting his arm fly in an undercut that knocks Shiro from his feet. He lands, hard. Keith biting his tongue as Shiro gets to his knees and ducks to the side a moment before Sendak’s heel drives into the ground. Shiro uses his shock to grab his leg and twist, whirling Sendak around like a ball and chain. A hammer’s throw that sends him catapulting into one of the chambers twenty feet away. Glass smashing and foul liquid spilling forth yet somehow missing Sendak’s body.

When Sendak gets to his feet he’s slower, but Shiro is too. Keith’s eyes narrow on the slash across his belly that shines with blood. His lips move and Keith realizes they’re talking. By the evil grin Sendak gives and the way Shiro rolls his jaw, Keith can tell that he’s getting to him.

Frantically Keith searches the glass for a way in. Both men charging at each other right in front of him. He can’t hear it, but he knows Sendak’s come out on top when a spray of blood arcs from Shiro’s torso and hits the glass. Keith’s energy thuds with his trapped heart. He can’t find an entrance anywhere, hysteria rising, and he pounds on the wall. Places his fists against the glass and calls on fire. Burning flames, marking the glass but not melting.

“Fuck!” Keith swears, one eye on the battle and the other still scanning.

And then, up on the ceiling and right in the corner, he finds a grate. Another found not too far past the wall, but back enough that he might even slip through unnoticed. If he could only catch Sendak by surprise.

He looks back, sees the two men circling and knows he has to make a move.

With a running leap at the corner, Keith kicks off the glass, propelling upwards where he does the same to the other side. Jumping higher and hands scrambling to find a hold on the grate, but it falls to the ground and takes him with it. Slamming hard and shoulder throbbing in the collision. Stars burst across his open eyes and he gasps in pain.

One quick, wheezing breath is all he allows and then he’s on his feet. Hunched and glaring at the wall but preparing to try once more.

Just then, Sendak’s arm slams against the glass and Keith startles to see Shiro held against it. Metal fingers tight around his throat and up on his toes. His smoke lashing violently and cutting across Sendak’s chest and face, but he doesn’t relent.

Neither have seen him, not yet.

“Hang on,” Keith urges, grinding his molars and tasting blood.

Renewed in urgency, he runs and darts up the wall, feet quick and grip sure as he grabs the lip of the vent and pulls himself through. His shoulder screaming in agony.

An endless network of ducts stretches before him once he’s in, but Keith knows which way to go. Crawling through dust in a shallow rasp of tired lungs, he reaches the other vent cover—finally brought to the fight—but everything freezes when he looks down. 

Directly below, Shiro’s on his back. Dazed and waxy with half his shirt tattered in stripes and vital fluid covering the floor. Sendak advances, arm charged and ready to strike.

“Victory or death,” Sendak recites and Keith doesn’t wait a microsecond more to drop from the vent, blade drawn and savage.

Sendak turns, shock broadening his human eye with Keith’s blade slicing the air then Sendak’s body. Flesh and cartilage cut in half with the force of Keith’s strength and will.

He hits the floor and slides on his knees, halting with one foot planted on the ground and blade bloodied.

And then—

Sendak falls.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments always appreciated!

**Author's Note:**

> Come talk to me on [tumblr](https://shiverslightly.tumblr.com/) | [twitter](https://twitter.com/shiverslightly)


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